Cooler Passions

In Athens 4,000 banner-waving Greek students flowed through the streets, shouting against not only the British but the Americans as well. They tried to storm the U.S. embassy. On Cyprus four days later, students staged noisy protest marches in several cities, stoned U.S. consular buildings, clashed with tear-gas-throwing police and British Tommies. The U.N. had just voted (with U.S. support) to table Greece's claim to the strategic British island fortress of Cyprus.

The most remarkable thing about last week's demonstrations was that they represented the only display of overt passion in a week when the U.N. methodically put off action on a whole roster of major colonial issues. Yet few subjects ordinarily incite more fervor--spontaneous or arranged--or provide more clash of interest and search of conscience than the cry of colonialism. In the closing days of the ninth session, the U.N.'s General Assembly voted:

P: 50 to 0 to put off a Cyprus discussion "for the time being." One of those voting for postponement was the country which originally demanded action, Greece.

P: 56 to 0 to put off, also "for the time being," an Arab-Asian proposal to encourage the independence movement in French Tunisia. Sponsors of the postponement: the Arab-Asian nations.

P: 55 to 0 to postpone discussion about the French Protectorate of Morocco.

P: To reverse its own political committee's verdict on West New Guinea. The Dutch thereby won a victory over Indonesia, which had sought to raise a bogus cry of colonialism (TIME, Dec. 13). A switch in sentiment by half a dozen Latin American nations made the Dutch victory possible.

What caused the new moderation? The anticolonial powers (mostly the Arabs, the Asians and the Latin Americans) claim moral victory in the postponements, on the grounds that by postponing "for the time being," instead of flatly refusing to take up the cases, the General Assembly in effect accepts jurisdiction. The colonial powers, who contend that these are internal matters outside U.N. competence, consented to the postponement resolutions because each contained in its ambiguous language the tools for postponing next time and the time after that. Greece, for all the intensity of its desire for control of Cyprus (whose people are of Greek stock), and Britain, for all its resolve to keep full control of the island that is now its Middle Eastern command post, held back from a quarrel that would impair NATO teamwork between Greeks, Britons and Turks.

Arab diplomats went so far as to admit that Mendes-France's reform efforts in North Africa are more promising than intemperate resolutions in the U.N.

The dominant push for moderation, however, came from the U.S., which is bedeviled by the contradictions between its own deep anticolonial instinct and the fact that its most important cold war allies are the colonial powers. In the most important committee votes, the U.S. abstained. But the U.S. was primarily concerned that nothing be done to upset Western Europeans at so crucial a stage in Western rearmament. In the U.N.'s corridors and lounges, where the doubtful are influenced, U.S. delegation members worked to soften all proposals for provocative action in favor of postponement.

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