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General sympathy with the proposal was at once evident, and discussion centred on the most effective means by which its objective could be attained. After consulting the delegations of the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and Canada, the United States delegation submitted an alternative resolution (reproduced below) which after further debate was adopted by acclamation. Briefly, it recommended that the General Assembly should set up a committee which would make a direct approach to those signatory States which had not yet arranged to make their further contributions, and would also urge upon those npn-signatory States which were, however, members of the United Nations to join UNRRA and help its work. In his address to a plenary session of the General Assembly at an earlier date, the principal New Zealand delegate, Mr Fraser, Jiad been able to announce that the New Zealand Government, subject to ratification by Parliament, had already agreed to make its second contribution to UNRRA. The discussion in the Second Committee disclosed, however, that only a few other countries had done so. Several delegates stressed the heavy obligations and the present economic difficulties of their countries, which prevented them from guaranteeing that their Governments would be able to make the full additional contribution. It was emphasized, however, that the resolution did not formally obligate Governments to make the contributions requested of them ; it merely asked that each contribute what it could. With the adoption of the resolution, the Second Committee also decided to recommend that the proposed special " Committee on UNRRA " should consist of the six members of the Central Committee of UNRRA (Canada, China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States), together with the Dominican Republic and New Zealand as contributing countries and Greece, Poland, and Norway as representatives of the beneficiary countries. When the Second Committee brought these recommendations to a plenary session of the General Assembly, they were adopted after a further discussion in which many tributes were paid to the work of UNRRA and much emphasis laid on the urgency of its tasks. For New Zealand, Mr Fraser drew attention also to the fact that since the resolution had been presented information of the most disturbing kind had reached them in regard to the world's food supplies, particularly the threat of famine in India as a result of the failure of the monsoon. The resolution on UNRRA, he said, would be passed immediately, and he hoped that every delegation concerned would communicate at once with its Government and ask it to make the second contribution of funds without delay. But conditions in Europe and Asia were such that he feared that, creditable as was the resolution to the United Nations, it would not go far enough towards victory in the new war against famine. He hoped that an inquiry would be made at once into the existing food situation, and that the Assembly could be given a survey of the facts before it adjourned.

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