World: Let ‘Em Stand

When Malta’s 129,649 voters approved independence by a small majority last week, their tiny Mediterranean island joined Malawi, Zambia and Tanzan* in a gaggle of emergent nations that are twisting tongues and ending any pretense of proportional representation in the U.N. Others clamoring for nationhood include British Guiana (pop. 620,000), Southern Rhodesia (4,000,000), Bechuanaland (335,000) and Angola (circa 5,000,000).

In time, no doubt, all the rest of the non-Soviet world’s 40-50 million people now living under some kind of colonial administration will also join the parade, even though they mostly inhabit hundreds of tiny islands and enclaves that have few of the ethnic and economic prerequisites for nationhood. If the 100 million non-Russian residents of the Soviet Union could have their way, such new nations as Azerbaijan and Yakutia would also be independently seated in the U.N.

As it is, each new state enjoys one vote in the U.N. General Assembly—as do all the major powers save the Soviet Union, which wheedled three votes for itself at the San Francisco Conference in 1945. U.N. officials see no way of stopping this proliferation, and in a stop-gap move to accommodate it, the General Assembly Hall has just been redone to seat 126 national delegations, 14 more than present membership. After that, presumably, there will be standing room only.

* Nyasaland (pop. circa 3,500,000) will be known as Malawi after independence, July 6; Northern Rhodesia (3,500,000) will become Zambia Oct. 24; the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar, pop. circa 10 million, is already a member of the U.N.