'U.N. Used For Lost Causes’

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30979, 8 February 1966, Page 20

'U.N. Used For Lost Causes’

(N;Z. Pres* Assn. —CopyriflhtJ NEW YORK,-Feb. 6. The United Nations is being used as a holding company for bankrupt policies and lost causes, James Reston, the “New York Times” associate editor, reported.

Reston said: It is usually summoned to the scene of disaster only when nobody knows what else to do, and the surprising thing under these difficult circumstances is that it still manages to be useful.

Vietnam is a case in point. The main negotiating problem now is to get the nations concerned to the conference table, but there is a fundamental dispute about who should be there. North Vietnam wants the National Liberation Front, which is the political arm of the Viet Cong, to represent “the people” of South Vietnam.

The South Vietnamese Governinent is opposed to this

and insists on representing South Vietnam by itself. This puts both the United States and the Soviet Union in a difficult position. Both want to support the position of their allies. Washington does not want to propose anything opposed by Saigon, and Moscow does not want to suggest anything opposed by Hanoi, so what is to be done? It is in this awkward situation that the United Natiops may have a role to play, and the United Nations is tackling the problem very carefully. Specifically, it is trying to get a working committee of neutral nations on the United Nations Security Council to propose a compromise which neither the United States nor the Soviet Union would be willing to put forward, but which both might be willing to accept because the suggestion came from the United Nations.

The working committee of the Security Council, now under private discussion in New York, be composed of the Security Council representatives of three African

nations: Nigeria, Uganda and Mali. These three nations abstained in the decision this week which gave the Security Council the formal task of trying to arrange a conference to discuss a negotiated settlement of the Vietnamese question. African Moves

It is believed that the representatives of these three African nations are being asked to consider proposing that the permanent members of the Security Council—the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and Nationalist China—plus the North Vietnamese Government, the South Vietnamese Government, and the National Liberation Front be the main members of a conference to discuss a peace settlement. This may not be acceptable either to the three African nations or to Washington or Moscow, but the purpose of the proposal is fairly plain. It is to let the proposal come from nations not involved in the Vietnamese dispute in the hope that Washington and Moscow will agree to go along, however reluctantly, with a proposal neither could put forward on its own initiative without getting into trouble'with an ally. Officials at the United Nations are not very hopeful that this device will succeed, but there is evidence that Moscow will help carry to Hanoi proposals it would not put forward itself. Shastri’s Wish For example, one of the last official acts of the Indian Prime Minister, Mr Lal Bahadur Shastri, was to request that Soviet Premier, Mr Alexei Kosygin, express to the North Vietnamese Government Mr Shastri’s conviction that the United States sincerely wanted peace in Vietnam and to urge Hanoi to negotiate. Mr Kosygin was not prepared to support these sentiments, but he did pass on the message along with his own observation that Mr

Shastri was undoubtedly sincere in the conviction that President Johnson wanted peace. It is known that the United Nations SecretaryGeneral, U Thant, has been trying to get support of the neutral nations to back the idea of a Vietnamese conference, so the peace offensive is not over yet. It has merely moved from the Potomac river in Washington to the East river in New York, and from the headlines to the quieter corridors of the United Nations. Nobody in New York is very hopeful that these new experiments will work. The United Nations has been invited very late, but it is trying, in its own way, with its own limitations, to do what it can. It was precisely in these corridors that the Berlin blockade problem was finally resolved. Moscow and Washington were not able to find a compromise by themselves, but in quiet ways, through the United Nations in the delegates’ lounge, conversations were started that led to a settlement.

No settlement is in sight on Vietnam, but at least the talks have started.