Second, besides being involved in official and informal Mission activities, Third, the General Assembly is a quasi-legislative body that observes Following these preliminaries, the three week period known as General Debate began. This period provides Foreign Ministers and Heads of State time to address the Assembly on matters of their urgent concern. Highlights of the first week of debate included addresses by Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, King Hussein of Jordan, President Lopez Portillo of Mexico, and Ambassador Gromyko of the USSR. Those distinguished governmental representatives as well as many others listed among their serious concerns the famine in Kampuchea (formerly Cambodia), the Middle East Crisis, the Palestinian problem, peaceful transition of power in Southern Africa, financing of UN operations, review of peacekeeping responsibilities and the North-South Dialogue. At the invitation of UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, Pope John Paul II addressed the Assembly. Needless to say, it was the highlight of the week. Behind the scenes, the seven main committees of the Assembly (Special Political Committee and the Committees on Political and Security Affairs, Social and Humanitarian Affairs, Decolonization Administrative and Budgetary Matters, Legal, and Economic and Financial Matters) are holding organizational meetings to prepare their respective work programs. I will be working principally with the Committee on Political and Security Affairs, but will also attend meetings of other committees on certain subject matters. During this time too, there are meetings of regional groups (Western European, African, Latin American, Asian and Arab) and countless bilateral consultations. Some consider these bilaterals to be the most important meetings that take place here. Secretary Vance, I'm told, had requests from some 75 Foreign Heads of State for consultations. Since delivering his major address on September 24, the Secretary has been meeting with representatives of those governments. I feel that these preliminary observations only begin to scratch the . surface of the complex political dynamics of the U.S./UN and the General Assembly. In future letters, I hope to report on specific issues scheduled for debate. Meanwhile, don't hesitate to let me know if there is a particular issue that you are interested in. I will welcome your comments and advice through the course of the General Assembly Session. Most sincerely, Larry Duinja. Larry Wip, Jr. Congress of the United States Dear Colleague: Report No. 2 from New York finds the U.S. Mission and the U.N. General Assembly shifting from low to high gear. General debate has concluded and the standing committees have moved into their substantive work, which will continue through to the end of November. 143 speakers addressed the Assembly during the three-week general debates: 8 heads of state; 5 vice-presidents; 1 deputy prime minister; 12 ministers; 101 foreign ministers; 2 vice-foreign ministers, and 9 chairmen of other delegations. Fidel Castro was invited by the U.N. secretary-general to report on the results of the meeting of the non-aligned states in Havana. Since the U.S. has no diplomatic relations with Cuba, our delegation gave Castro_a pretty cool reception when he entered the Assembly Hall. contrast, others welcomed him enthusiastically. In The Steering Committee has allocated each of the 144 agenda items to the seven standing committees. They work as committees of the whole, meet concurrently, and prepare draft resolutions for adoption by the plenary. Ben Rosenthal's Special Political Committee deals with the report of the U.N. Scientific Committee on Atomic Radiation, the situation of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, the Report of the Committee on the Inalienable Rights of Palestinian People, a review of peacekeeping operations, and the peaceful uses of outer space. Larry Winn's Committee on Political and Security Affairs plans to debate chemical-biological weapons, the denuclearization of Africa, the creation of nuclearweapon-free zones in the Middle East and South Asia, and the progress made by states since the 10th special session on disarmament. It also will take up the Soviet-sponsored item, "the inadmissibility of the policy of hegemonism in international relations." The Committee on Economic and Financial Matters (Howard Rosen, U.S. Public Delegate) expects to consider reports of various U.N. bodies, including the Economic and Social Council, the U.N. Institute for Training and Research, the U.N. Industrial Development Organization, the U.N. Technology for Development. Such major North-South questions as international economic cooperation, long-term trends in economic development and the transfer of real resources will also be discussed there. The Committee on Social and Humanitarian Affairs (Esther Coopersmith, U.S. Public Delegate) --the so-called women's committee of the Assembly--has begun its review of the U.N. program to eliminate race discrimination and to promote and better coordinate U.N. human rights programs. It will subsequently discuss a convention on torture, the status of the international human rights covenants, the U.N. Decade for Women and the report of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. The Committee on Trusteeship (William L. Dunfey, U.S. Public Delegate) is taking up the question of "activities of foreign economic and other interests that are impeding the implementation of the Declaration on Granting Independence to Colonial Countries and People in Southern Rhodesia and Namibia." The Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Affairs has an especially big job because it must approve the scale of assessments for U.N. members, the U.N. budget for the biennium 1980-82, as well as the financial reports of all U.N. bodies such as UNDP, UNICEF, UNRWA, and UNHCR. The Legal Committee (Sixth Committee) has some dozen items before it, including the reports of the International Law Commission and the Special Committee on Strengthening the U.N. Charter. It started its work the other day by considering a draft international convention against taking hostages. To manage These topics demonstrate the ever-expanding number of problems that U.N. member states define as common and requiring international institutional solutions. the work of all of the committees, as you can imagine, requires sizeable delegation staffs as well as Secretariat staff. Already the documentation for each of the committees is voluminous, maybe too much so. Yet there are some other issues considered so important that they will be taken up by the whole General Assembly: the International Year of the Child, apartheid, Namibia, the Third U.N. Conference on the Law of the Sea, and Kampuchea. Kampuchea--the ancient name for Cambodia--has provoked major issues for the United States and the U.N. in recent weeks. One issue is who is the legitimate representative of Kampuchea: the Pol Pot regime, which the Assembly seated last year, or the Heng Samrin, which invaded Kampuchea some months ago? Both have committed gross human rights violations which the United States abhors. The Assembly settled the issue by accepting the credentials of Pol Pot, with the U.S. supporting this on the technical basis that Pol Pot was seated last year but stating that this support in no way indicated our recognition of that regime. Meanwhile, in Kampuchea, the Pol Pot and Heng Samrin factions continue fighting, and famine is widespread. U.N. Secretary-General Waldheim requested U.N. members to respond with humanitarian assistance. The amount estimated to meet the need is approximately $110 million. U.N. members have mobilized the first tranche of about $20 million and several international organizations--the International Committee of the Red Cross and the U.N. Children's Fund (plus OXFAM and Catholic Relief) --have gained access and are distributing food and medical supplies to famine victims in Pol Pot and Heng Samrin controlled areas. The U.S. hopes to provide as much as a third of the total from existing programs and additional Congressional appropriations, but we've not yet handed the secretary-general a check. We urge you to give the Kampuchean problem very serious attention. You'll be hearing from us frequently. Please pass this newsletter along to other interested parties. Congress of the United States Dear Colleague: Needless to say in this third report, the situation in Iran is the No. 1 priority item at the United Nations. The release of the hostages in Tehran is of enormous concern to us in the United States Mission, as it is to all Americans. The U. S. has held innumerable private discussions with other governments about this at the UN, the Secretary General has taken strong diplomatic stands on the situation, and the Security Council unanimously adopted a strong statement asking "that diplomatic personnel being held in Iran be released without delay and provided protection." Meanwhile, the UN General Assembly has reached the halfway point. plenary and the seven standing committees meet twice a day. The Assembly In the Special Political Committee, Ben has delivered U. S. statements on the report of the Scientific Committee on Atomic Radiation, the report on the UN Works and Relief Agency for Palestine, and Peacekeeping Operations. While adding to the U. S. statement on UNRWA he referred to U. S. support of the Camp David accords as the important context in which the Palestinian question is being negotiated. Larry follows the Committee on Political and Security Affairs. But as a member of the House Committee on Science and Technology, he's gotten involved in some other Science/Technology-based issues. Recently, he gave the U. S. statement on the report of the IAEA on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and played an active role in contributing to the U. S. statement on the report of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. Other public members have been working on such important items as apartheid; Two member states, Colombia and Cuba, are contenders for the Latin American seat on the Security Council. Since balloting began three weeks ago, a deadlock has developed with neither country acquiring the two-thirds majority (96 votes) needed. |