UNITED NATIONS: Until April I

In Paris last week, as the U.N. Assembly wound up its affairs for 1948, various things happened to upset the dignity of delegates. The Palais de Chaillot’s elevator operators went out on a quickie strike, followed by the dining room waiters. Fire broke out in an unoccupied committee room. During the Palestine debate in the great green & gilt plenary room, a balcony photographer dropped a film can on Turkey’s table. Worst of all, brash young Garry Davis, who calls himself a citizen of the world (TIME, Sept. 20, 27), and who has needled the Assembly since September, pulled a crowd of 20,000 to hear him speak in the cold Velodrome d’Hiver, while the Palais de Chaillot’s comfortable seats were far from filled.

This U.N. session turned out to be, technically, only half a session. Early last week it became apparent that the Assembly could not cover its overloaded agenda before Christmas, although lights burned late in the Palais de Chaillot (see cut). So it was agreed that this would be Session Three, Part One, and that Part Two would convene on April i at Flushing Meadow. Business carried over to April will include the Italian colonies, Franco Spain, the proposed U.N. guard force, and the treatment of Indians in South Africa.

At Session Three, Part One, the General Assembly:

¶ Voted, 40 to 6, in favor of the “majority” (U.S.-backed) plan for world control of atomic energy, kept the U.N.’s Atomic Energy Commission alive in the hope of finding something acceptable to Russia.

¶ Rejected, 39 to 6, a Russian propaganda proposal to reduce armaments of the Big Five by one-third within one year; approved, 43 to 6, a Belgian resolution that “no agreement is attainable . . . for the reduction of conventional armaments and armed forces” so long as information and control agencies are lacking.

¶Put off until April Israel’s application for U.N. membership, but set up a Palestine Conciliation Commission (members: U.S., France, Turkey) to try to bring peace to the Holy Land.

¶Passed, 47 to 6, a vote of censure against Greece’s northern neighbors, and continued the work of UNSCOB (United Nations Special Committee on the Balkans).

¶Recognized, 48 to 6, the U.S.-Sponsored Korean Republic (South Korea). tj Passed, 48 to o, a Declaration of Human Rights. There were eight abstentions, including the Soviet bloc (six votes), South Africa and Saudi Arabia.

¶ Passed, 55 to 0, a convention outlawing genocide, which was denned as actions “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” There were no abstentions.

¶ Voted, 40 to 6, to keep the Little Assembly (which functions while the General Assembly is not in session) going for another year.

¶ Voted (31 to 0, with six abstentions) a budget for 1949 of $38,692,578, of which the U.S. will pay 39.89%, Britain 11.37%, Russia 6.34%, China and France 6% each.

What did the doings at the Palais de Chaillot add up to? The easy and cynical answer was: $39 million for more talk. Yet the framework, the organizational experience and the high goals of the U.N. had survived for another strife-torn year. The struggle for the world was being conducted mostly in arenas outside the U.N., but the U.N. remained the one place where the world’s opinion of that struggle could be focused. And no one had yet advanced a resolution to the effect that world opinion was negligible.