United Nations: The Propaganda Forum

Past the 104 white flagpoles outside the United Nations building last week rolled a fleet of limousines delivering diplomats to an autumn rite as familiar and often as shrill as the first day of school: the opening of the U.N. General Assembly. Settling down to business, the delegates welcomed the U.N.’s four newest members-Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Rwanda, and Burundi—whose admission boosted Assembly membership to 108; Algeria and Uganda will be up for admittance later in the session.

Then the wrangling began.

In his opening speech, U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson expressed the hope that the 17th Assembly would “replace strident politics with quiet but determined diplomacy.” Russia, of course, preferred the strident approach. In a ranting, two-hour tirade, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko lashed at U.S. policy toward Cuba (see THE NATION). Crammed with 92 separate items, the agenda gives the Russians plenty of opportunity to exploit the Assembly as a propaganda forum.

Question Mark. One of the hottest battles will be over money. The U.S. is preparing a major campaign to whittle down the U.N.’s huge $138 million deficit by collecting back dues from delinquent members, including cash for the expensive Congo and Middle East policing actions. Despite an advisory opinion by the World Court that delinquent nations should pony up their full share for all the U.N.’s activities, Russia has flatly refused to pay for the Congo operation. Said Gromyko: “Let no one entertain the belief that the Soviet Union will divert a single kopeck to aiding the colonialists to sanctify their criminal deeds” in the Congo.

Controversy is also expected over the election of a new Secretary General. Logical candidate for the job is Burma’s taciturn U Thant, who is serving out the unexpired portion of Dag Hammarskjold’s term. Backed solidly by the Asian bloc, Thant is also assured of U.S. support; although he is a neutralist, the U.S. cannot hope to get a much more pro-Western man in the present U.N. But the Soviet Union and its satellite delegations have indicated that they will wage another campaign in favor of the troika, a three-headed (one Western, one neutral, one Communist) monstrosity that would leave the U.N. executive impotent.

There also will be noisy debate on the twin issues of disarmament and nuclear testing. The U.S. wants to keep both sets of talks going at Geneva, still maintains that the only way to detect underground nuclear explosions is a system of on-the-spot inspections, which Russia calls “espionage.” Russia hopes to gain a propaganda advantage by bringing both issues before the Assembly, which would destroy what little hope there is of an effective test settlement. Left over from the 16th Assembly are old anticolonialist resolutions condemning the Portuguese in Angola and the British in the self-governing colony of Southern Rhodesia. Biggest question mark of the session is whether Nikita Khrushchev himself will show up in Manhattan. Western diplomats anticipate that Khrushchev will wait until after the U.S. elections in November, then come to the U.N. to dramatize his maneuvers for a separate peace with East Germany and to press for a summit meeting with President Kennedy.

Brain on Ice. If other diplomats shivered at the prospect of another shoe-thumping tantrum, the Assembly’s new president, Pakistan’s spade-bearded Sir Muhammad Zafrulla Khan, 69, showed last week that he was not about to take any guff. Told by the Russians that the General Committee, of which he is chairman, was “debasing its dignity,” Zafrulla Khan retorted coolly: “The committee is the guardian of its own dignity and well able to take care of it.”

A meticulous jurist and diplomat, whose favorite description of himself is “a brain on ice,” Zafrulla has always been, in an era of revolution and extremism, an advocate of moderate policies. Unfailingly courteous, even in the most heated debates, he disdains flamboyant and vituperative oratory in favor of low-keyed logical argument, has often clashed in the U.N. with his archfoe, India’s leading warlock, V. K. Krishna Menon. Though Zafrulla was an early champion of Indian independence, he never became a crusader or an inmate of political prisons like Nehru, preferred instead to work for an evolutionary agreement with the British, won sneering acclaim as “Britain’s favorite Indian.”

Zafrulla is a deeply committed antiCommunist, has privately often chided the U.S. for lavishing more attention and money on vacillating neutrals than on such strong supporters as his own Pakistan. A devoted Moslem, he neither smokes nor drinks. Once divorced, he is presently married to a 24-year-old Palestinian Arab beauty, who is now at a finishing school in London. As he took the presidential chair last week, Zafrulla recognized the strains of his post. “0 Allah,” he prayed aloud in Arabic, “expand my chest. Make my task easy. Grant me eloquence so that they may understand me.”