Moyniham to the U.N.

By the accounts of most diplomats, John Scali, 57, has been a resourceful, effective U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. But last week a clutch of stories in the press declared that Scali was on his way out. The man who reportedly, over lunch with a journalist friend, leaked the news is also Scali's rumored successor: Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 48, former Ambassador to India and the social policy Mr. Fixit of the Johnson and Nixon Administrations. President Ford's choice of Moynihan has not been confirmed by the White House; however, it is expected that Moynihan will go to the U.N. some time this summer. Now a professor of government at Harvard, he is best remembered for his confidential memo to Nixon setting forth the notion of "benign neglect" toward blacks. When the memo was leaked, it drew a stinging series of attacks from blacks and others, but Moynihan insisted he had only meant that black rhetoric should be taken less seriously, not black needs or aspirations.

Nixon named Scali U.N. envoy in December 1972, after Scali had finished two years as special consultant to the President for foreign affairs. Nixon admired Scali's grasp of world politics, and during his stay at the White House, Scali accompanied the President on his trips to the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. In the process, Scali also earned the dislike of Henry Kissinger. While in Washington, Scali bristled at the king-size Kissinger ego, and of late at the U.N. relations between the two men have grown increasingly strained. Scali was especially annoyed by Kissinger's recent hard line toward Israel, as well as by Kissinger moves that obliged Scali, in his view, to mislead his U.N. colleagues about U.S. aims and activities in Viet Nam.

Scali has wanted to leave for some time, and Kissinger boosted Moynihan, an old Harvard friend and an ally in the Nixon White House, as his replacement. There is speculation in Washington that Ford may want to name Scali to another high diplomatic post, but for his part Scali is considering several job offers in the private sector.

Tough Speech. Scali's most publicized moment during his stint at the U.N. came last December, when he delivered a tough, bluntly worded General Assembly speech decrying Third World dominance of the U.N., which he charged signaled a new "tyranny of the majority." Alluding to such Assembly votes as the curtailment of Israeli participation in the Middle East debate and the suspension of South Africa, he warned that "self-centered actions" were endangering the U.N.'s future. "Americans are questioning their belief in the United Nations," he said, and "are deeply disturbed."

Presumably among the most disturbed was Pat Moynihan, who, in a widely discussed article in the March issue of Commentary, urged the U.S. to take up, in the U.N. and elsewhere, the role of the loyal opposition to ideologically extreme Third World positions. "It is time we grew out of our initial--not a little condescending--supersen-sitivity about the feelings of new nations," wrote Moynihan, urging the U.S. to treat Third World nations "as equals" and to end its "extraordinarily passive, even compliant" policy toward them. Doubtless bearing that sharply worded article in mind, one Latin American diplomat at the U.N. last week called Moynihan's impending appointment "an American declaration of war on the Third World." While Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger certainly have nothing so drastic in mind, Moynihan at the U.N. does seem to signal a continuation of a new U.S. toughness in the world forum.

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