The failure of the United Nations to deal effectively with threats to peace was deplored here today by David Hacohen, chairman of the Israeli Parliament’s foreign affairs and defense committee, in an address before 650 parliamentarians from 60 countries assembled here at the conference of the Interparliamentry Union.
Mr. Hacohen, head of the Israeli delegation, and frequently a member of his country’s delegation to the United Nations General Assembly, charged that the U.N. has failed in its main purpose, under the first article of the U.N. Charter, which calls for the maintenance of international peace and security through collective measures against aggression. He said that what the Charter means “is not only rushing a U.N. army between belligerents, but the settlement of disputes by peaceful means.” He pointed out that international disputes “are prevailing in the four corners of the earth, yet they continue unchecked.” He said “the U.N. has proved itself unable to cope adequately not only with breaches of the peace but even with threats to peace. This impotency has a corrosive effect on the U.N. Organization.”
According to the Israeli, “the very halls constructed for the purpose of promoting peace echo with the shameless exposition of the schemes of one member state to attack and destroy another, in flagrant violation of the Charter’s basic tenets. Such a spectacle takes place while a sophisticated world watches inattentively — hoping it can carry on business as usual.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
