UNITED NATIONS: Trouble in Tunisia

The words of a severe argument in the United Nations were punctuated last week by the chatter of a machine gun 4,400 miles away from the U.N.’s Manhattan debating halls.

On a lonely stretch of road six miles from Tunis, assassins poured a stream of bullets at a man driving past. Next morning his body was found, crushed and unrecognizable. The authorities identified him as the most formidable Tunisian nationalist leader still at liberty in the land: Farhat Hached, 39-year-old head of the 100,000-strong General Union of Tunisian Workers.

French authorities on the scene blamed extremists for the crime, and used the occasion to lock up a dozen top nationalist and labor leaders. The Tunisians blamed the assassination on what they said was a secret terrorist organization of resident Frenchmen called “the Red Hand.”

Hached’s union called a three-day strike. Three hundred Arabs trying to march on the headquarters of the French Resident General clashed with police. In French Morocco, also stirred by Hached’s death, Arabs killed seven Frenchmen, horribly mutilating some. Then, as the Arab mobs surged through the streets of Casablanca looking for trouble, police opened fire on them, killed at least 40.

At the U.N., where 13 Asian and Arab nations are demanding U.N. intervention to give Tunisia its independence from France, both sides used the assassination to support their argument. Arabs and Asians called it the product of “a wave of terrorism” inspired by French rule. Britain and Belgium, colonial powers like France, said the crime is a sample of increasing terrorism to come if the U.N. insists, in violation of its charter, on interfering in a matter that falls within the internal jurisdiction of France.

France itself continued to boycott the U.N. discussion after insisting that it would pay no attention to any U.N. recommendations. The U.S., which had infuriated the colonial powers by voting for U.N. discussion of the case, infuriated both sides by refusing to tell where it stood. “We are keeping our mouth closed,” explained a U.S. delegate, “because if we open it, we will get our teeth kicked down our throat by one side or the other.” This week, however, the U.S. in effect came down on France’s side, supporting a proposal which gingerly excludes any U.N. intervention in the dispute, simply calls on French and Tunisians to “continue negotiations on an urgent basis.”

The Tunisian case is only the second major political matter to reach the floor of the General Assembly in two months of its current session. The first was Korea. After endless corridor-dickering and com ma-placing, the General Assembly last week voted out, 53 to 5, the Indian resolution (TIME, Dec. 1). The resolution supports the U.S. objection to forcible repatriation of Communist prisoners, but is full of vague clauses designed to tempt Red Russia and China. Even so, Russia and China want no part of it; the Indian love call remains unanswered.