Diplomats Assembled

Three planes from Moscow landed at Orly field and disgorged 87 Russians, led by moon-faced Jacob Malik. Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky was due next day. From the U.S. came Secretary of State Dean Acheson and an entourage of 93, including Warren Austin and Eleanor Roosevelt. From London came Anthony Eden with his Homburg and a briefcase filled with problems.

From all over the world the diplomatic set descended on Paris this week for the sixth annual meeting of the General Assembly, the 60-nation parliament of the United Nations. There were at least 5,500 in all--diplomats and politicians, economists, admirals and generals, atomic experts, mimeograph operators, translators, 1,000 newsmen, international lobbyists, obscure civil servants.

Old Quarrels. There were nearly 70 problems on the Assembly agenda, most of them wearing familiar place names (Morocco, Israel, Kashmir, Korea), or reminiscent of old quarrels (the Communist effort to capture China's U.N. seat; the prospects of international atomic control and disarmament). Was there anything else that mattered?

Before the paint was dry on the $3,000, 000 temporary new U.N. building, facing the Eiffel Tower across the Seine, the buzz of diplomacy began. The Egyptians wooed their fellow Arabs; the Russians tended their dovecotes secretly, but undoubtedly had some new mutation of peace dove to exhibit. Acheson and Eden ate dinner together, and had private talks with France's Robert Schuman. Schuman thereupon announced that the West had prepared a U.N. peace program that would be "a world sensation."

New Plans. Acheson had come to Paris with a far-reaching proposition to lay before the U.N.--stressing, as Russian proposals usually do, a willingness to talk peace. Some of its essentials: swift completion of a truce in Korea; a fresh call for world disarmament and simultaneous control of atomic energy, based on full inspection; Western agreement to four-power negotiations with Russia any time Russia had something genuine to offer. But it was prepared to go further. Last year, Acheson's "Uniting for Peace" resolution transformed the lowly Assembly from a debating society into an agency that might take over actual peace enforcement from the veto-choked Security Council. This year, Acheson wanted the Assembly to take on even more power by tying together, under its auspices, the regional security organizations which the West has been building. There are now five, involving 38 nations, and the U.S. is the only nation belonging to all: NATO, with twelve partners already and Greece and Turkey soon to join; the 21 countries in the Organization of American States; the Pacific security pact between the U.S., Australia and New Zealand; separate U.S. security arrangements with Japan, and with the Philippines. Each is designed to counter aggression in its region. Under Acheson's new plan, the U.N. General Assembly would appoint these security organizations as its agents in various parts of the world, and assume for itself the power to order them into action, under the U.N. flag, if trouble comes.

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