The U.N. Under Fire

Perched on observers' chairs off to one side of the high-ceilinged hall that houses the U:N. Security Council, two rival delegations from the Congo last week waited eagerly to see which would be recognized by the U.N. as the legitimate voice of the Congolese government. In the end, as if talking over the heads of the Congolese, the Council decided to hear neither. For almost overnight the primary concern of the Security Council had shifted from the intricacies of Congolese politics to a crucial debate on the competence and authority of the U.N. itself.

The subject was the Congo, but the issue was whether the U.N. could hold the new ground it had staked out as an international midwife of newly born nations, or whether it should subside into the role of a debating society.

The challenge to the U.N.'s new role came from Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Valerian Zorin who launched into a 75-minute attack on Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold and his conduct of the U.N.'s Congo forces. "The U.N. command and the Secretary-General in person," cried Zorin, "ignore the lawful government of the Congo. They do not merely fail to help the government, but attempt to discredit it. They try to impede in every way the implementation of measures which the government is taking to restore order and normalcy in the country. They try to assist the countries of NATO and the U.S. in particular . . . in their imperialist designs in Africa."

Zorin ended by demanding what amounted to a vote of censure of Hammarskjold and a directive sharply restricting his authority in the Congo. Dag Hammarskjold's usually impassive face flushed with anger. "My record is on the table," he said. "I stand by it . . . The U.N. is engaged in a major effort to give life and substance to the independence of the Congo. No misunderstandings, no misinformation, no misinterpretations of the actions of the U.N. should be permitted to hamper an operation the importance of which, I know, is fully appreciated by all those African countries which, with great efforts of their own, support the work of the U.N. in the Congo."

Only Alternative. Springing to Dag Hammarskjold's defense, newly installed U.S. Delegate James Wadsworth (Cabot Lodge's successor) boomed: "U.S. policy in the Congo is simple. We support the U.N. wholeheartedly. We consider it the only satisfactory alternative to chaos, war and intervention." Bluntly, Wadsworth ticked off what he said were the real reasons for Soviet rage at Hammarskjold. By closing the Congo's airports and taking over the radio stations, the U.N. had weakened Premier Patrice Lumumba, whom Moscow had hoped to use as a cover for Soviet penetration of the new nation. If he fell, the Kremlin would have little hope of continuing the flow of Russian planes, materiel and military personnel with which, charged Wadsworth, Moscow hoped to establish "a Soviet satellite state in the heart of Africa."

To rebuff the Soviet challenge to Hammarskjold's Congo policy, Wadsworth proposed a forthright resolution that would bar any state from sending military supplies into the Congo except through the U.N. Toward 1 o'clock one morning last week, a modified version of Wadsworth's resolution, presented by Ceylon and Tunisia, was put to the vote. Stubbornly calling for outright repudiation of Hammarskjold's acts, Zorin cast Russia's 90th veto in the Security Council. Wadsworth immediately called for an emergency General Assembly meeting under the "Uniting for Peace" rule, which permits the Assembly to take over vital issues that have been stalled in the Security Council.

After the Blast. There was a strong probability that Zorin, by his very aggressiveness, had blundered badly. The U.N., in its efforts to save the Congo from total collapse, had indeed moved closer and closer to assuming an unofficial mandate over the country, raising nagging doubts in the minds of some African neighbors and among others as well as to the legal consequences of the U.N.'s authority over the Congo. Fortnight ago, Ghana's President Nkrumah, justifiably suspicious that the U.N. was not working overtime to keep Lumumba in power, threatened to pull Ghanaian forces out of the U.N.'s Congo command. After all, the U.N. was in the Congo at the specific request of Lumumba. Inevitably, some African leaders who thoroughly disliked Lumumba saw any form of outside intervention as the hated shadow of "colonialism," or as a future threat to the uncontrolled use of their own sovereignty.

Before Zorin's blast, the Africans might have felt free to express these doubts publicly and to condemn the consequences of Hammarskjold's Congo program as imprudent and improper. Many Africans would have been happy to have Khrushchev for a friend in their battle against colonialism.

But it was something else again to have him attacking the U.N. itself, the only place in the world where their voices were heard and their influence felt. Thanks to Hammarskjold's scrupulous insistence on using African, and not big-power, troops wherever possible in the Congo, the Africans recognized that the U.N. so far has kept the Congo from becoming, as Spain had once been, the hapless cockpit for a battle between giant powers. Put that way, most Africans were inclined to choose the U.N.

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