Words of Dissent

While the U.S. continued its support of the U.N.--President Kennedy last week even decided to recommend that the U.S. purchase half the U.N.'s $200 million bond issue to keep it solvent--sharp words of dissent came from Britain. Foreign Secretary Lord Home bluntly criticized both the U.N. and many of its members for policies that, as he sees it, can destroy peace, not preserve it.

Declared Lord Home to a local United Nations association in northern England: > The U.N. has embarked on "a new and dangerous practice" of anticolonialism, passing resolutions that "could only be described as reckless and careless of peace and security," and showing a "double standard" that criticizes Britain's colonialism, ignores Soviet imperialism. "Is there growing up almost imperceptibly a code of behavior where there is one rule for the Communist bully, who deals in fear, and another for the democracies, because their stock in trade is reason and compromise?"

> A resolution passed by the General Assembly in December 1960, which stated that "inadequacy of political, economic, social or educational preparedness should never serve as a pretext for delaying independence," showed a "total lack of responsibility." After all, he said, "everyone has seen the chaos in the Congo."

> The U.N.'s members, for the first time, are supporting the use of force "to achieve national ends." Goa, said Lord Home, is a case in point. "Whatever the provocations suffered by India, there is no doubt at all that her actions were a direct breach of the U.N. Charter and of international law." Yet four members of the Security Council condoned India and many more delegations, "perhaps a majority," would have done the same had the issue gone to the General Assembly.

In addition, Home noted acidly, many members refused to carry their share of the U.N.'s financial load. They are, he said, "free enough with their votes" but "not nearly so ready to pay their legally assessed subscriptions." Of the 104 members, 82 are in "serious arrears." This suggests "power without responsibility."

Lord Home did have warm words for some of the U.N.'s positive gains--the defeat of the Soviet "troika" scheme by the "common sense of the Assembly," and the "quiet, unostentatious but valuable work" in medicine, farming, education and technical assistance. Home even conceded that, while Britain opposed the U.N.'s violent methods in the Congo, U.N. action had "kept the cold war out of that country."

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