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University Daily Kansan Friday, October 20.1961
Leadership, Money, Unity Lacking in UN
UNITED NATIONS — (UPI) — The United Nations is plagued by twin ailments—a lack of funds and the absence of clear-cut leadership.
A month after the death of Dag Hammarskjold the world organization is still without a Secretary General and badly split over how to replace him.
US AMBASSADOR ADLAI E. STEVENSON warned this week that the wrong move in settling the dispute over a Secretary General "will be the first step on the slippery downhill path to a debating society without operating responsibilities or competence."
The financial prospects are that the United Nations will be millions in the red by the end of the year. Earlier this week it was disclosed that the United Nations has only enough money for two more weeks of operation In The Congo.
The disunity is mirrored in big power dispute over how to choose Hammarskjold's successor.
On Sept. 18, the day after a plane carried Hammarskjold to his death in distant Rhodesia, an unemotional diplomat observed, "We are left without a helmsman."
ALTHOUGH CERTAINLY NOT admired by 100 per cent of the membership, and reviled by the Soviets, Hammarskjold was recognized as occupying his top-floor suite ready to step into any international embroglio the Security Council or the Assembly might give to him.
With Hammarskiold gone, bickering started at once on his replacement. The United States and its Western partners publicly, at least, left it to a group of small powers to work out the procedure for agreement on a new top man and his administration.
There were many diplomats who expressed belief that if the United States had gone immediately to the General Assembly, it could have had Mongi Slim of Tunisia, whom it favored for the job, elected as interim Secretary General within a few days of Hammarskjold's death.
BUT THE WHEELS of consulta-
dion take time to turn and India was the first of the "neutral" powers to insist that the Assembly could not act without prior recommendation from the Security Council, as, indeed, is prescribed by the UN charter for selection of a permanent secretary general.
The Russians were privately delighted with developments. Although, admittedly, they were as unprepared for the death of Hammarskjold—whom they were boycotting as secretary general—as the Western powers, the situation suited them.
Their campaign to substitute a "troika" of three veto-wielding secretaries general was prepared to be pushed hard in 1963, when Hammarskjold's term would have expired.
BUT WHILE GIVING what the United States regarded as misleading agreement to a single interim Secretary General, the Russians sought to inject their troika principle at the undersecretary level in various guises.
The result was bewilderment, especially for many of the newer delegations.
The United Nations carries on with 29 officials of undersecretary rank directing its affairs. There is no provision for any one of them to take over automatically.
THE FEAR OF DEDICATED UN diplomats is that "another Congo" may erupt, anywhere in the world. In such event, the United Nations, they believe, would be all but powerless to act without a strong Secretary General who, under Soviet-opposed US proposals, would be free to act without any political strings.
If there should be "another Congo," it is probable that the United Nations, now near bankruptcy, would not be able to raise the money to take care of it.
UN controller Bruce Turner told the budgetary committee recently that, on the basis of anticipated expenses and income, the United Nations could expect a cash deficit of about $30 million by the end of 1961.
the financial system, Turner said, the deficit will grow to $50 to $60 million by next March 31 and will reach $90 million by June, 1962.
IF NO CHANGES are made in
Turner announced this week that unless $20 million is appropriated by the end of October, the UN Congo operation will collapse.
A financial report dated Sept. 30 showed arrearages of $118,108,287 in assessments upon the member countries.
Fiscal experts said that figure was somewhat exaggerated, however. Of the total, $22 million still was due on the regular 1961 budget and, on past experience, it was anticipated that most of it—including $3 million still due from the United States—would be paid.
THE UNITED STATES OWES $0 million for its share of this year's operational costs of the UN Emergency Force (UNEF) on duty in the Middle East and there is $2 million due from Britain for the Congo operation. There is confidence these will be paid.
But Russia owes $20 million for the Congo operation and $12.7 million for UNEF—which will not be paid. The Soviet Union has insisted it will contribute "not a kopeck" to such operations, arguing that they should be paid for by countries responsible for causing the crises.
France owes $9.4 million for the Congo operation and has served notice it will not pay. Recently, South Africa told the Assembly it would renge on its $825,000 share for The Congo, an operation for which some 70 countries are understood to be in arrears.
IN THE FACE OF THIS, new African countries—Nigeria was one—are demanding that money be added to funds such as the UN technical assistance program, for which the basic appropriation is only $1 million.
There is no way of judging what operations such as the Congo will cost. Its expenses were expected to have dropped drastically by the time the Assembly's emergency appropriation of $100 million expires at the end of October. The military flare-up in Katanga, which eventually led to Hammarskjold's death, ruined their prospects.
Programs like the special fund for economic development will have no money for loans next year unless a bonanza is found.
FINANCIAL EXPERTS agree that unless the organization's 101 members can be persuaded to pay their assessed shares of U.N. costs—regular operating and emergency budgets—the world organization will have no alternative except to go into the commercial market for loans.
They calculate that in the present unsettled state of world affairs, hard-nosed bankers might find the United Nations a poor risk.
United action has been the goal of the world organization since its charter conference at San Francisco in 1945.
Originally 51 members, the United Nations has grown into an outsize international body of 101 countries in 16 years.
EACH NEW MEMBER BRINGS its national prides and problems into the organization with it, making the concept of unity more difficult to achieve.
There are now a half-dozen or more systems of law, culture and even morality represented in the organization.
A WESTERN EUROPEAN diplomat who came from a career in international law pointed out that Liberia and Ethiopia, two of the leaders in the move against Louw.
are plaintiffs against South Africa in a case pending before the International Court of Justice.
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Several diplomats observed privately that what they regarded as infringement of freedom of speech in the Assembly could have been headed off by a well-timed admonition of caution from the United States, Britain or France.
He said it is elementary international law that the case—involving race policies in South West Africa—should not be prejudged while it is before the court.
For
The problem, as veteran diplomats see it, is to find a formula to combine any two of the lacking elements—leadership, money and unity—if the United Nations is not to follow into oblivion the League of Nations, wrecked 30 years ago by largely the same difficulties.
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