Gentlemen's Disagreement

In the corridors of the Palais de Chaillot, United Nations diplomats grabbed lapels and murmured propositions like a band of Chicago wardheelers choosing up a slate of aldermen. The lobbying went on outside the U.N. as well--at cocktail parties, convivial soirees and special opera performances, where diplomats who fought each other by day exchanged chitchat with each other's wives at night. The big plums were three small-power Security Council seats which become vacant at year's end. Everybody quickly settled on two of them--Chile to succeed Ecuador in one of the seats traditionally reserved for Latin America, and Pakistan to succeed India in the seat allotted by custom to the British Commonwealth Eastern nations. They fell out over Seat No. 3.

Dispute. Under the U.N. charter, Security Council membership is supposed to be parceled out on a basis of "equitable geographic distribution." Under a "gentlemen's agreement" among U.N. countries, that means that one of the six small-power seats goes to the Communist bloc. The agreement was bent a bit two years ago when Yugoslavia, still Communist but no longer Moscow's Little Sir Echo, got the seat.

Last week, with Yugoslavia's term ending, the U.S. decided the time had come to break the "gentlemen's agreement" completely. Buttonholing other delegations, it argued that the Communists--by siding with the aggressors in Korea against U.N. --had lost all moral right to the seat. The U.S. proposed Greece. The Russians proposed Byelorussia, a Soviet state which is no more entitled to international standing than Mississippi, except that at Yalta, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to recognize it (and the Soviet Ukraine) as full-fledged U.N. members.

The U.S. delegates ran into trouble. At least half of the 20 Latin American nations, angry because the U.S. had joined a move to give one of Latin America's four World Court judgeships to India, indicated they would vote for Byelorussia. So, to the dismay of the State Department, did Great Britain. Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden believes that East-West relations have become so frozen that a little pliability on small things might thaw Russia out. After all, said the British, Russia already has one veto on the Security Council, and one more small vote for the Russians could not make matters any worse. And furthermore, the British want to protect the gentlemen's agreement whereby another Council seat is reserved for the British Commonwealth. Other Western Europeans, reportedly the Scandinavians and French, sided with the British.

Deadlock. By the time balloting came, the U.S. was still trying hectically to piece together what Moscow likes to call the "Americans' automatic majority." But it could not. On the first ballot, Greece got 30 votes, considerably short of the required two-thirds majority, to Byelorussia's 26. Seven ballots later, Byelorussia was ahead, 32 to 27, and the deadlock remained. "In these circumstances," intoned the acting Assembly President, Britain's Sir Gladwyn Jebb, "we should postpone the election in order to give us all time for reflection."

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