Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold announced that he has accepted new credentials from Dr. Omar Loutfi, head of the Egyptian delegation here, as chairman of the delegation of the United Arab Republic. Mr. Hammarskjold made it clear in his announcement that his acceptance of Dr. Loutfi’s new credentials–and the implied de facto recognition of the UAR by the United Nations–would still need higher approval.
The Secretary General’s announcement said he had accepted the credentials “within the limits” of authority vested in the Secretary General and “without prejudice to any impending action by any of the principal or subsidiary organs of the United Nations.” This meant that the General Assembly, Security Council, Trusteeship Council or any other important UN group could refuse to go along on recognizing the UAR.
At the very time Mr. Hammarskjold made the announcement, the Trusteeship Council was in session. Syria is a member of that Council. Thus the Syrian representative could become the representative of the UAR. Under such an arrangement, the Egyptian-Syrian delegation in the United Nations would give up one General Assembly vote–but would retain such other votes in other bodies, like the Trusteeship Council, as had been assigned previously to either Syria or Egypt.
As a result of Mr. Hammarskjold’s announcement, there will now be only 81 members in the United Nations instead of 82. But wherever either Syria or Egypt had a vote before, they would still have a vote–except in the General Assembly.
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