U Thant Calls for Determined U.N. Effort to Establish Peace in Middle East

Secretary-General U Thant told the 22nd session of the United Nations General Assembly, which opened today, that “an immediate and challenging issue” before it was the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the territories they had occupied in the June war. There was, he said, “near unanimity” on that issue in the United Nations, but he warned that the question of withdrawal could not be divorced “from other vital issues, and particularly that of national security.”

In his introduction to the annual report on the work of the United Nations. Mr. Thant stressed that “the unwillingness of the Arab states to accept the existence of Israel, the insistence of some on maintaining a continuing state of belligerency with Israel — although those maintaining belligerency may themselves refrain from committing belligerent acts — and the question of innocent passage through the Strait of Tiran and the Suez Canal are also fundamental issues which present hotly controversial problems and sharp division, even though there is much agreement on the principles involved.” Other serious problems in the crisis, he told the Assembly, are the problem of the Arab refugees and “the El Fatah type of sabotage and terrorist activities across the borders into Israel, with resultant retaliation.”

The Secretary-General emphasized that “there is a desperate need for a determined, immediate and urgent” U.N. effort to help bring about the conditions essential to peace in the Middle East,” and asserted that such an effort should be “constant and unrelenting until those conditions have been achieved.” He said that direct peace negotiations between the Arab states and Israel “would be most encouraging,” but expressed doubt that such negotiations were “in the realm of present possibility.” He advised that one step that could help immediately would be an Assembly decision authorizing him to appoint a special representative to the Middle East who would act as “a much-needed channel of communication” to report events in the area, interpret them and to act as a “harmonizer of ideas in the area.”

INDICATES BELIEF ARAB-ISRAEL ARMISTICE AGREEMENTS ARE STILL VALID

An important section of the report was given over to the 1949 armistice agreements between Israel and Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. The Secretary-General pointed out that the agreements were “only a step toward peace and not considered a basis for a more or less permanent way of life in the Middle East.” He noted, however, that “there has been no indication either in the General Assembly or the Security Council that the validity and applicability of the armistice agreements have been changed as a result of the recent hostilities or of the war of 1956.” He stressed that, “in fact, each agreement contains a provision that it will remain in force ‘until a peaceful settlement between the parties is achieved.’ ” Neither the Assembly nor the Council, he added, had taken any steps to “change the pertinent resolutions of either organ relating to the armistice agreements or to the earlier cease fire demands.”

URGES OBSERVANCE OF ‘FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES’ IN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

Mr. Thant told the United Nations members that there were certain “fundamental principles” in international relationships, the “soundness and intrinsic worth” of which no one could dispute. “It is indispensable to an international community of states,” he admonished,” — if it is not to follow the law of the jungle — that the territorial integrity of every state be respected, and the occupation by military force of the territory of one state by another cannot be abandoned. Similarly, every state’s right to exist must be accepted by all other states; every state is entitled to be secure within its own border.” He added, on this score, that “the parties themselves are firmly and solemnly committed to these principles.”

He pointed out that, by subscribing to the United Nations Charter, all states had pledged that “all members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered” and that “all members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.”

DEFENDS UNITED NATIONS AS A PEACE-KEEPING OPERATION

The Secretary-General conceded that both Israelis and Arabs had expressed dissatisfaction with the United Nations’ role in the resolution of the Middle East situation and described their attitude as “both misguided and short-sighted.” In his justification of the work of the United Nations, Mr. Thant said that “the role of the peace-keeper is never likely to be continuously popular with any of the parties to a conflict. By the very nature of its status and its moderating functions, a peace-keeping operation can never espouse the cause of any of the parties. There thus tends to be an underlying element of dissatisfaction and frustration in the relations of the United Nations with the parties to a conflict.

“This condition may even at times border on a breakdown in those relations. This, however, does not signify that the peace-keeping work of the United Nations has served no purpose, nor that it would be in the interest of the parties to a conflict to do without the assistance which the Organization alone can give them. Quite apart from its more positive functions, the United Nations provides an invaluable repository and a safe target for blame and criticism which might otherwise be directed elsewhere.

“The organization has,” he declared, “during all its years and in many situations, performed a vital function as an international lightning rod, as, in fact, it is now doing in the Middle East. These are facts of international life which should not be lost sight of when the effectiveness and the future of the peace-keeping function are being considered. The basic problem, now as always, lies in the acceptance by Governments of international decisions and machinery and the degree of their realization that the wider interests of international peace may in the long run also coincide with their own best interests. We are today, I need hardly add, very far, in general, from such a realization.”