The Nichevo Line

As if trying to prove Dean Acheson's wishful point that the Russians might become good boys some day (see above), the Russians were being relatively mellow at U.N.'s General Assembly. Andrei Vishinsky opposed the U.S. plan for widening the powers of the Assembly, but he was less vitriolic than usual. Jacob Malik, the Relentless Rudolph of last month's Security Council sessions, softened to the point of telling one reporter to remember the Russian word nichevo. "It means," explained Malik, " 'don't worry, things will turn out all right.'"

This Russian cordiality mightily impressed a few reporters, who breathlessly watched every wrinkle on Russian faces and, like Sweet Alice, "wept with delight when you gave her a smile, and trembled with fear at your frown." Although Ben Bolt Vishinsky was smiling last week there was no evidence whatever of a real change in Soviet policy.

A Note of Urgency. The 5th General Assembly opened in a more urgent and hopeful mood than previous U.N. Assemblies. Outgoing Assembly President Carlos P. Romulo kept his farewell speech brief. Said he: "Mere words are a cruel mockery while men are dying for the sake of peace."

To succeed Romulo, the Assembly elected Iran's Ambassador to the U.S., Nasrollah Entezam, able, agile former Iranian Foreign Minister and onetime Grand Master of Ceremonies at the Shah's Imperial Palace. Said Entezam: "I am sure that I shall be able in your name to assure those young and valiant fighters [in Korea] that we shall do all within our power so that they may return home as soon as possible . . ."

When, two days later, Guatemala's Dr. Ismael Gonzalez Arevalo asked the Assembly to rise for a moment of tribute to the soldiers who had died in the U.N. cause in Korea, all delegates stood up except the Russians, their satellites and the Yugoslavs.

Such Language. The Assembly's first dispute came over an Indian proposal supported by Russia and her satellites to seat delegates from Red China. A group of non-Communist nations, including Great Britain, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Israel and Pakistan also voted for the proposal. Dean Acheson declared that the majority of the U.N. still recognized the Nationalists as China's legitimate government, although he carefully suggested that the Assembly would be able to decide later which of the "two claimant regimes" should be seated.

Vishinsky, obviously having a wonderful time, tore into Acheson. No one had stated the case against the Nationalists better than the U.S. Secretary of State himself, said Vishinsky. He cited Acheson's remarks in the State Department's 1949 China white paper (in which Acheson called the Nationalist regime "a government which had lost the confidence of its own troops and its own people"). Vishinsky also quoted from General Joseph Stilwell's memoirs, in which Stilwell described the situation in China as the "Chinese cesspool" and the Nationalist regime as a "gang of murderers." Vishinsky elaborately apologized for such language: "I should not want to say one rude word in any way, shape or manner. These are the words of the commander in chief of the United States troops in China."

The Agenda. Despite Vishinsky's maneuvers, the Assembly voted against seating the Chinese Reds, passed the problem on to a committee.

The Assembly's steering committee adopted an agenda of 69 items, many of them perennials including: 1) U.N.'s condemnation of Franco Spain; 2) Communist threats to Greece; 3) Nationalist Chinese charges that Soviet Russia interfered in the Chinese civil war; 4) Western charges against Russian jamming of foreign broadcasts; 5) Russia's failure to repatriate German and Japanese prisoners of war. The steering committee also put on the agenda, without protest from Russia, Dean Acheson's proposals for strengthening the role of the Assembly( see above). Then it passed, without protest from the U.S., a Russian proposal to debate "American aggression" against China by its intervention on Formosa.

The U.S. itself submitted an item for inclusion in the Assembly's agenda called "The Question of Formosa," announced that it would invite the General Assembly to consider and settle "the future of Formosa" and of its nearly 8,000,000 inhabitants. The move was an unmistakable slap at the Nationalists (see box), gave aid & comfort to the Chinese Reds in their effort to get into U.N.

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