The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) Council held its eighth meeting in Paris from April 8 to 10, 1963, under the chairmanship of Mr. Maurice Couve de Murville, Minister of Foreign Affairs of France. According to the communiqué released at the close of the meeting, the Council discussed the situation in Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. Ministers noted that considerable progress had been achieved in the fight against subversion in Vietnam and that one might expect a new improvement in the situation thanks to the efforts made by the Vietnamese government. It was hoped that South Vietnam, with the support given to it, would be in a position to maintain its advance toward internal stability and international security. The Council reiterated its support for a neutral and independent Laos and took note of the deployment of troops from some member countries in Thailand in May 1962.

The 1963 UN Pledging Conference on the Expanded Program of Technical Assistance (EPTA) and the Special Fund was held at UN Headquarters on October 15, 1963, under the presidency of D. O. Hay (Australia). Opening the Conference, Secretary-General U Thant stressed the achievements of EPTA and the Special Fund in the past twelve years. However, he said, powerful social pressures generated by the desire of increasing populations for decent living standards had also grown. Both programs therefore had to be further strengthened if they were to help the emerging nations raise the living levels of their peoples and their capacity for growth.

The annual report of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA), covering the fiscal year July 1, 1963, to June 30, 1964, was presented to the Boards of Governors of the Bank and IDA on September 7, 1964.

The twelfth annual meeting of the Board of Governors of the International Monetary Fund was held jointly with the Board of Governors of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development in Washington D.C., September 23–26, 1957, under the chairmanship of Miguel Cuaderno, Sr. Per Jacobsson, Managing Director, reviewed the activities of the Fund during the previous year. Emphasizing that the Fund's assistance was of a short-term nature and designed to enable countries to adopt and carry out, within a limited period of time, programs to restore stability to their economies, Mr. Jacobsson stated that the Fund was being used to help countries meet emergency needs, ease strain in the balance of payments, meet temporary exchange difficulties, and fulfill stabilization programs. Mr. Jacobsson went on to discuss various problems encountered in connection with the Fund's activities and cited, inter alia, multiple currency practices, Fund liquidity, and, in connection with general aspects of the world economy, inflation, relative values of currencies, and financing for underdeveloped countries.

Case concerning the Aerial Incident of November 7, 1954 (United States v. Soviet Union): On July 7, 1959, an application instituting proceedings against die Soviet Union was filed in the Registry of the Court by the government of the United States. In its application the government of the United States alleged that on November 7, 1954, one of its aircraft was attacked and destroyed over the Japanese island of Hokkaido by fighter aircraft of the Soviet Union. It requested the Court to find that the Soviet Union was liable for the damages caused and to award damages in the sum of $756,604. It also stated that it had submitted to the Court's jurisdiction for the purposes of this case and that it was open to the government of the Soviet Union to do likewise. In accordance with Article 40 of the Statute of the Court, the application was thereupon communicated by the Registry to the government of the Soviet Union.

The fifth regular session of the General Assembly, meeting at Lake Success on September 19, 1950, had before it an agenda of 70 items. The Assembly was expected to discuss, in particular, questions concerning Palestine, the former Italian colonies, the Balkans, threats to the political integrity of China, the problem of the independence of Korea, observance of human rights, international control of atomic energy, technical assistance for under-developed areas, freedom of information, refugees and stateless persons, matters concerning trusteeship and non-self-governing territories, administrative and budgetary matters, reports of the specialized agencies, and reports of the Secretary-General on activities of the organization during the year.

The resumed 24th session of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) was held on December 10 and 13, 1957, under the presidency of Mr. Mohammad Mir Khan (Pakistan). The Council elected as members of the Council Committee on Non-Governmental Organization, Brazil, China, France, the Netherlands, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The Council also elected Morocco to membership on the Technical Assistance Committee to replace the Sudan, which had been elected to ECOSOC, thereby becoming ineligible for TAC as a nonmember of the Council. The appointment of a number of members of ECOSOC commissions was subsequently confirmed by the Council.

In the short span of a year, from the Messina Conference held on June 1 and 2, 1955, by the foreign ministers of Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, to the series of meetings begun in Brussels on June 26, 1956, among the same governments, the idea of economic unification of these six countries has made a striking advance toward its realization. The heads of the delegations to the Intergovernmental Committee established by the Messina Conference produced a report in which they jointly and unanimously proposed to start drafting a treaty (or two treaties) to establish a “common market” and an atomic community (Euratom) along the lines of their report. The governments are not yet formally committed to accept all the recommendations of this report; but they agreed at the Venice Conference on May 29, 1956, to take it as a basis for the negotiation of the treaty. This document is therefore to be regarded as much more than another expert opinion on the desirability or the feasibility of economic integration. It outlines the detailed objectives to be reached and contains a relatively precise timetable hammered out through months of arduous discussions which took the better part of the summer and of the fall of 1955 in the Belgian capital. Euratom and the “common market” are of course closely interrelated political issues. Technically, however, they are quite distinct and only the common market is examined in this paper.

The present critical stage of inter-American relations offers a timely occasion for an inquiring glance at the Organization of American States (OAS). For more than half a century—and particularly during the last two decades—the United States has increasingly adapted its policy toward Latin America to the principles and procedures of the Organization of American States, confident that such an approach would best serve our long-range objectives in the hemisphere. Yet the varying responses which the United States has gained from the regional agency when problems of high importance have been submitted to it constitute one of the most confusing aspects of our hemisphere relations. The last few years have provided a striking illustration of this point.

On March 5, 1970, the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) went into effect, having been ratified by 47 states including the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The treaty legally bars these three nuclear powers from transferring atomic weapons to nonnuclear states and formally pledges those nonnuclear states signing the treaty to refrain from developing such weapons or acquiring them from other powers. It thus caps a long effort by the United States to inhibit—so long as it could not preclude—the spread of nuclear weapons and to avoid the potential instabilities associated with that spread.

According to the press, a one-day meeting of the Political Consultative Committee of the Warsaw Pact in Moscow on February 4, 1960, was attended by premiers and foreign ministers of the eight pact members (Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, the Soviet Union, and Romania) and by observers from Communist China, Mongolia, North Vietnam, and North Korea. In a 4,000-word declaration issued after the meeting, the pact members expressed the hope that forthcoming East-West summit talks would be “a turning point in the relations” between the two groups of countries and proposed that the summit agenda include such topics as general and controlled disarmament, a German peace treaty, creation of a free city of West Berlin, a ban on nuclear weapons tests, and amelioration of relations between East and West. The committee also repeated the communist proposal for a non-aggression pact between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact countries and called on NATO members to respond to the Soviet Union's armed forces cut of 1, 200, 000 men by reducing their forces as well. It criticized NATO for maintaining “inflated armies” and for arming West Germany with atomic weapons, adding that the West German government was being given a free hand in the production of these weapons.

On May 5, 1951, the Deputies of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization announced the adoption by their governments of new terms of reference for the North Atlantic Council, a reorganization of the various committees of the Council, and the creation of a financial and economic board.

The Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (hereinafter referred to as the Convention), signed in Rome on November 4, 1950 entered into force on September 3, 1953. It provides in Article 19 for the establishment of two organs whose task it is “to ensure the observance of the engagements undertaken” in the Convention by the contracting parties: a European Commission of Human Rights (hereinafter referred to as the Commission) and a European Court of Human Rights (hereinafter referred to as the Court).

“To maintain international peace and security …” is the first purpose listed in Article I of the United Nations Charter, and it is generally conceded to be the Organization's most important one. Although the United Nations Charter provides procedures for both peaceful settlement and peacekeeping, the peacekeeping role has been more active and more contentious. Indeed, without an authoritative organ for interpreting the Charter each Member has been left to determine for itself the meaning of such fluid phrases as “enforcement action,” “national sovereignty,” and “primary responsibility,” to mention only a few. The result has been a divergence of views which surprises all but that consummate logician—the reasonable man.

The General Council of the International Refugee Organization held its eighth session October 23 to 27, 1951 at Geneva. The Council reviewed the annual report of the Director-General for the period July 1, 1950 to June 30, 1951 in which Mr. Kingsley summarized the activities and achievements of IRO since its inception, defined the migration trends for the previous year, and discussed methods being employed to transfer IRO functions to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the Allied High Commission for Germany, and to voluntary groups and local authorities. In a supplementary report on residual problems Mr. Kingsley emphasized the serious refugee problems in Greece, Trieste, Austria, Italy, China, and Korea which would survive the organization's closure early in 1952 despite the substantial completion of IRO activities by that time. He reported that 573 ‘institutional hard core’ cases were being resettled and 1,514 locally resettled but pointed out a lack in satisfactory arrangement for 477 hard core cases in Shanghai, Samar, Greece, and Spain, while particularly emphasizing the need to make intensive efforts to resettle the 398 cases in Shanghai and 900 additional cases in Trieste. Although the Council agreed to delay its communication on residual problems to the United Nations until its next session pending further information on Trieste and Shanghai, it approved a decision first to assist the 477 hard core cases, then to apportion expenditures equally between material assistance and resettlement. At the close of this report on residual problems Mr. Kingsley announced the favorable outcome of the shipping program and satisfactory arrangements with the ‘institutional hard core’, permitting resettlement of 9,000 additional refugees before closure.

The report of the Director-General, Dr. Vittorino Veronese, on the activities of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1959 dealt, as usual, with: 1) relations with member states and international organizations; 2) execution of the program; and 3) administrative services. Under the first heading, the Director-General reported that during the year in review the Singapore/British Borneo group associate membership in the Organization had ceased to exist as of December 31, 1959, when Singapore alone had assumed the rights and duties of an associate member, and that relations with the UN, the specialized agencies, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had continued to develop.

Additional measures to increase the numbers of scientists and engineers in European countries were agreed upon by the Council of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) in approving the second annual program of the organization's Office for Scientific and Technical Personnel. Potential funds at the disposal of the Office were increased to approximately $1,350,000 in order to put this program into effect. The new program was to comprise courses, seminars, conferences, and improved methods of instruction and experiment which would help the spread of scientific and technological knowledge and new training policies throughout Europe.

On June 7, 1960, it was announced that the government of Guatemala had entered into a one-year stand-by arrangement with the International Monetary Fund authorizing drawings up to $15 million in support of the country's currency. The purpose of the arrangement was to help Guatemala maintain the traditional stability of the quetzal by providing a second line of reserves to supplement other stabilization measures, such as an increase of reserve requirements against bank deposits, limitations on central bank rediscounts, and a further reduction of government expenditures. Guatemala, with a quota of $15 million, had not previously drawn upon the Fund's resources.