Page image

8

The United States —by far the largest contributor—opposed the United Kingdom proposal, and wished to leave the fixing of the ceiling figure till the whole programme had been considered. The Director-General spoke strongly against the United Kingdom position. After several sittings, a meeting of the United Kingdom and United States delegations "out of session " agreed upon a working compromise which was adopted by the whole Commission. The arrangement was as follows : (1) The whole programme to be discussed in detail by the Commission without reference to any ceiling, and the general attitude of the Commission on each point to be noted. (2) Towards the end of the Conference a Drafting Committee to consider the recommendations of the Commission and to work out a tentative Budget with a suggested ceiling. (3) The report of the Drafting Committee to be presented to the Programme and Budget Commission, which would then consider and decide upon the ceiling figure, leaving the detailed figures of the Budget to be adjusted accordingly. This procedure was adopted, and the Drafting Committee recommended a total budgetary allocation for 1950 of something over 8,000,000 dollars. In Commission a reduction was proposed by the United Kingdom—New Zealand voting with the United Kingdom—but in the end a " target" figure of 8,000,000 dollars was adopted by the Conference. UNESCO's Activities in Western Germany This question resulted in a heated discussion which had a stronger political flavour than any other of the Conference activities. The policy in the past has been to make UNESCO's facilities available to the whole of Germany, but the Government controlling Eastern Germany has not so far allowed UNESCO work in that territory, although much good work has been achieved in Western Germany. The delegate from Czechoslovakia, followed by the delegates from three other countries, proposed that all UNESCO activities in Western Germany should cease forthwith, on the ground that the unification of the whole of Germany was being menaced by this separate treatment. The speeches were carefully prepared and vigorously delivered both in the Commission meetings and afterwards in the plenary meeting at the end of the Conference. It was held that the UNESCO activities should cease, so as to help to force the controlling Governments to bring about political unity. In opposition it was made clear that "it is not UNESCO's policy to

Log in or create a Papers Past website account

Use your Papers Past website account to correct newspaper text.

By creating and using this account you agree to our terms of use.

Log in with RealMe®

If you’ve used a RealMe login somewhere else, you can use it here too. If you don’t already have a username and password, just click Log in and you can choose to create one.


Log in again to continue your work

Your session has expired.

Log in again with RealMe®


Alert