Grateful for Small Favors

Jordan was on the verge of anarchy.

Egypt and Israel confronted each other uneasily across the Suez Canal. Half a world away, the corridors of the United Nations Secretariat building buzzed with talk of skyjackings and guerrillas. There were plenty of crises--and opportunities for the U.N. to assume a peace-keeping role. Yet when the new president of the General Assembly, Norway's Edvard Hambro, addressed the world organization last week at the opening of its 25th session, he implicitly acknowledged that the U.N. was powerless to cope with problems of such magnitude.

In his first speech as president, the cool, suave Norwegian, 59, emphasized instead some less spectacular and more manageable problems. Hambro urged, for example, a halt to "the erosion of our environment," adding: "Pollution knows of no national boundaries, recognizes no political sovereignty and does not distinguish between rich and poor." This is hardly the primary purpose for which the U.N. was set up. Remembering that last year U.S. officials suggested that NATO also should start worrying about pollution, one might conclude that ecology, however important in its own right, has become the last refuge of despairing politicians and diplomats.

Not that Hambro is the despairing type. Norway's chief delegate to the U.N. since 1966, Hambro was the unanimous choice of the European members, whose turn it was by gentleman's agreement to select the president for the coming session; he was elected by 122 of 124 votes cast in a secret ballot.* The bespectacled Hambro, a delegate to the U.N. founding conference in 1945, is the son of the late Carl J. Hambro, who served as the last president of the League of Nations. As a student, young Edvard did research under a fellowship at League headquarters in Geneva. A former smoker, Hambro now inveighs against tobacco with almost evangelistic fervor, and will not hesitate to ask guests not to smoke in his presence.

Hambro is descended from an old Jewish family that came to Norway centuries ago. but he is a Lutheran. He is distantly related to the founders of Hambros Bank in London. His wife Elizabeth, 54, whom he met in France, is the granddaughter of Charles Darwin. They have four grown children.

Imposing Cast. In the weeks ahead, Hambro is certain to be preoccupied with matters of protocol. From Oct. 14 to 24, when the U.N. formally celebrates its 25th anniversary, between 40 and 70 heads of state are expected to visit the glass-and-steel headquarters on Manhattan's East River.

Despite the imposing cast of characters, there is little likelihood of major diplomatic breakthroughs. That would be consistent with the U.N.'s record of the past 25 years--few big successes, some small ones and many disappointments. As Secretary-General U. Thant said last week: "There are times when I believe that the U.N. has not been faring so badly; that we have had an uneasy peace during the last 25 years, and that we have at least avoided an atomic conflagration; that nearly a billion people have gained their independence, without the bloodshed and struggles which other nations had to endure. But there are other times when I believe that with the will, support and enlightened vision of governments, especially the major ones, the United Nations could have fared infinitely better and done more during this period." Few would challenge that point.

*The two dissenting votes in the secret ballot went to Chile's Jose Pinera and Saudi Arabia's Jamil Baroody. The irrepressible Baroody often gets one vote, and there is a growing suspicion that he casts it for himself.

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