NO EARLY EFFECT EXPECTED FROM WESTERN APPEAL TO U.N.O. SECURITY COUNCIL

Grey River Argus, 1 October 1948, Page 5

NO EARLY EFFECT EXPECTED FROM WESTERN APPEAL TO U.N.O. SECURITY COUNCIL

RESUMPTION OF TALKS BY FOUR POWERS SUGGESTED

(Rec. 10.10) LONDON, September 30. The ,Western Powers have applied to the United Nations to have the Berlin dispute placed before its Security Council. It is expected that today the U.N. will call on the Council to deal with the dispute.

“The delegates of the other countries have already noted with relief that the Western Powers do not ask the U.N. Security Council to take any drastic action at this stage,” says The Times correspondent at Paris. '“The way to conciliation is thus still left open, and, once again, it is being unofficially suggested that the Four Powers should be recommended to open discussions on Germany as a ; whole. Berlin, it is pointed out, is a place where the wider disunity of the Powers in Germany has reached the danger point, and, so' the argument runs, it is hard to see how the Berlin dispute can be discussed apart from the German dispute from which it springs.

“The Security Council itself cannot discuss a German settlement, but it might, it is suggested, tell

the Four Powers to try again. And if the .Russians * are sincere in their oft-expressed clesir’e for a renewal of talks on Germany, the promise of such talks Ke the only thing to induce them to raise* their blockade. Looking still further ahead, some say thatt, even if the wider talks failed, that failure would, at any rate, bring clarity and finality, and the positions and responsibilities of the Powers in a divided Germany would be seen more clearly. A suggestion for such wider talks would have to come from one of the smaller Powers represented at the Security Council, and it is noted that nothing has yet been said by any of the Pour Powers themselves to rule out such a proposal.

’The correspondent continued: “For the immediate future, however, the prospect is wholly confused. In all possibility, the debate in the Council will open with procedural' wranglings, with M. Vyshinsky disputing the Council’s right to examine anything to do with Germany while Germany is still nominally under the Four Power. responsibility recognised by s Article 157 of the U.N.O. Charter. Then there is the all-too-clear probability that charges and coun-ter-charges will only aggravate the dispute. As no action can be authorised, in any case, beacuse of an inevitabe Soviet veto many delegates wonder what purpose will be served in the Council. “Educating world opinion” is . of-, ten given as the answer; or it is said’ that the United States is deliberately bringing matters to a head, and is confronting Russia by way of warning, with the assembled force of thefreeworld. “Another (American answer was heard yesterday, more rational than others. The Berlin dispute, it was suggested, might become more tense and more dangerous. The United States Government does not want war, but in the present state of American public opinion, it might be forced to take strong action if an incident, say in the Berlin corridor —were to occur. Public pressure in America might be all the greater if the dispute were not already being examined by the Security Council. The fact that the Council' was in possession of the case might, there- 1 fore, act as a steadying force, a sheet anchor, providing time and means for international consideration.”'