The Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) held its 50th session in Montreal from September 13 to December 16, 1963.

In 1961 the General Assembly declared the 1960's to be the UN Development Decade and called for intensified efforts to accelerate progress toward self-sustaining growth. During 1965, designated International Cooperation Year, the United Nations is to take stock of the progress made thus far. Next to peace and security, which are preconditions for progress in all fields, international cooperation to promote economic and social development of the less developed countries now holds the highest priority for United Nations action.

The Board of Governors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) held its nineteenth annual meeting in Tokyo, September 7–11, 1964, under the chairmanship of Francisco Aquino h., Governor for El Salvador. The meeting was held in conjunction with the annual meetings of the Boards of Governors of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and its affiliates.

One hundred and two of the 110 states members of the International Labor Organization (ILO) met in Geneva from June 17 to July 9, 1964, for the 48th session of the ILO General Conference. Among those attending the Conference were 196 government delegates, 95 employers' delegates, 95 workers' delegates, and 63 ministers of labor. Mr. A. Aguilar Mawdsley (Venezuela) was elected President and the following three delegates were elected vice presidents: Mr. K. R. Baghdelleh (Tanganyika and Zanzibar), government vice president; Mr. S. Wajid Ali (Pakistan), employers' vice president; and Mr. H. Collison (United Kingdom), workers' vice president.

The ANZUS Council held its fourteenth annual meeting in Washington on June 28, 1965. Keith J. Holyoake, Prime Minister and Minister for External Affairs of New Zealand; Paul M. C. Hasluck, Minister for External Affairs of Australia, and Dean Rusk, Secretary of State of the United States, attended the meeting.

This discussion purports to review some of the more significant developments that have marked the management of UN operational programs during recent years. The emphasis of the commentary is on the highlights of field administration since 1960 when the research for the present writer's more extensive study on this subject was completed.

On October 4, 1957, when Sputnik I was successfully orbited, it was popular to say that mankind had entered a new age—the Age of Space. If this was not just hyperbole, perhaps we are entitled to make a few judgments about the Space Age as it moves toward the end of its first decade. For, even from this short a perspective, the Space Age sharply illustrates the portentous conflict in our time between the forces of neonationalism and, for want of a better word, internationalism.

A meeting of representatives of the member states of the Arab League was held in Cairo on April 28–29, 1965. During the session, which was boycotted by Tunisia, a resolution was adopted under which the Arab heads of state rejected any call for recognition, reconciliation, or coexistence with Israel and declared that recognition of Israel in exchange for the repatriation of the Palestinian Arabs would be a deviation from Arab unanimity on the Palestine cause and from the Charter of the Arab League. The representatives also reaffirmed Arab support for previous Arab summit resolutions on the Palestine question, including a unified Arab command, on the “Palestine Liberation Organization,” and on Arab schemes for diverting the headwaters of the Jordan River. The resolution, however, did not provide for the expulsion of Tunisia from the Arab League and its exclusion from all future Arab summit meetings, demands made by Ahmed Shukairy, Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Mr. Shukairy walked out of the meeting on April 29, but he was later persuaded to return.

The eighteenth session of the Administrative Council of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) was held in Geneva from March 23 to April 26, 1963, under the chairmanship of Mr. Gabriel Tedros (Ethiopia).

The thirteenth conference of Commonwealth Prime Ministers to be held since the war took place in London on July 8–15, 1964, with the participation of all eighteen independent nations of the British Commonwealth.1 When the conference opened on July 8 under the chairmanship of Sir Alec Douglas-Home (United Kingdom), agreement was reached on an agenda in the following order: 1) a review of the world political situation; 2) the progress of British territories toward independence and membership in the Commonwealth; and 3) means of promoting closer cooperation between the peoples of the Commonwealth; and world economic affairs.

By the Charter of the United Nations the Secretariat is established as one of the six principal organs of the United Nations. The Secretary-General is designated ‘the chief administrative officer,’ not—be it noted—of the Secretariat but of the Organization. The Secretariat comprises the Secretary-General together with the staff appointed by him. The two institutions, the Secretariat and the Secretary-General, may well be regarded as distinct but inseparable—distinct in that the Charter confers in Articles 98 and 99 certain functions and powers specifically on the Secretary-General; inseparable in that the Secretariat is a unitary institution, organized on a functional basis, the members of which are ‘subject to the authority of the Secretary-General’ and ‘responsible to him in the exercise of their functions.’

The first 1964 meeting of the Ministerial Council of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) took place in Geneva on February 13–14, 1964. Chaired by Dr. Hans Schaffner, Minister of Public Economy in Switzerland, the meeting reviewed all major developments relating to the objectives of EFTA.

The United States was the principal architect and builder of the United Nations, and the great mass of the American people welcomed the new edifice with enthusiasm and high—perhaps too high—hopes for a new world. Now, two decades and many crises later, United States opinion is wiser and more ambivalent. A large majority of the public still gives general support to the United Nations, but its enthusiasm is tempered by experience, and a vociferous minority holds views ranging from biting criticism to total rejection.

The second Conference of Nonaligned Nations, following the Belgrade Conference of September 1961, took place in Cairo on October 5–10, 1964. During the preparatory meeting held in Colombo, Ceylon, on March 23, 1964, the participants agreed that the Conference should be convened in Cairo in the first week of October and that the countries to be invited should be: 1) the 25 which had taken part in the Belgrade Conference; 2) all those which subscribed to the Charter of the Organization of African Unity (OAU); 3) all Arab countries which had taken part in the January 1964 meeting of the Arab League in Cairo; 4) Malawi, Laos, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Uruguay, Venezuela, Austria, Finland, and Sweden; 5) Zambia and British Guiana if their independence was proclaimed before October 1964; and 6) Holden Roberto's provisional government of Angola and any other provisional government formed in Africa between March and October 1964 and recognized by the OAU. It was also decided that the Cairo Conference should be preceded by a foreign ministers' meeting in Cairo. The preparatory meeting recommended that the following items be included in the Conference's agenda: 1) general discussion of the international situation; 2) the safeguarding and strengthening of world peace and security and the promotion of positive trends and new emerging nationalist forces in international affairs; 3) peaceful coexistence and the codification of its principles by the United Nations; 4) respect for the sovereignty of states and their territorial integrity; 5) problems of divided nations; 6) colonialism, neocolonialism, and imperialism; 7) racial discrimination and the policy of apartheid; 8) settlement of disputes without the threat or use of force in accordance with the principles of the United Nations Charter and the right of self-determination; 9) general and complete disarmament, prohibition of all nuclear weapons tests, establishment of nuclear-free zones, prevention of the dissemination ol: nuclear weapons, and the abolition of all nuclear weapons; 10) the United Nations, its role in international affairs, the implementation of its resolutions, and approval of proposed amendments to the Charter; and n) economic development and cooperation, the effects of disarmament on world economic development, and the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

On November 6, 1963, the Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) authorized its Secretary-General to conclude an agreement of cooperation between the OAS and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), included in which would be an exchange of experts in the nuclear energy field and of studies, information, and documents of common interest. A similar relationship between the OAS and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) was approved at the Council's December 4 meeting.

The Caribbean Council held its fifth and last meeting in Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles, from November 30 to December 4, 1964. Attending the meeting were delegates from France on behalf of French Guiana, Guadeloupe, and Martinique; the Netherlands Antilles; Surinam; the British Virgin Islands; the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico; and the United States Virgin Islands. Representatives of Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, and St. Vincent, countries enjoying special observer status, attended the meeting. Also at the meeting were observers from the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

From its founding the United Nations has been a frequent source of puzzlement and embarrassment to Soviet policy makers. Given the reticence of Soviet statesmen, past and present, and the inaccessibility of Soviet diplomatic archives, we can only speculate about the expectations which were in the minds of Premier Joseph Stalin and Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov when they gave their approval to the Moscow Four-Nation Declaration on General Security of October 1943, the first great-power commitment to the establishment of a new international organization. For United States policy makers, certainly, this unprecedented commitment, buttressed by the Vandenberg Resolution, marked an important change in their nation's perspective and purpose. It represented a new determination, even if a vaguely defined one, to cooperate with other nations in establishing and maintaining a better foundation for international peace and order. For the Soviet leaders, who were celebrating the grim liberation of Kiev in the midst of the Moscow Conference, there was probably little time, and certainly no leisure, to speculate about the possible congruence or incongruence of Soviet ambitions with the stabilizing and even static assumptions that underlay a revived and expanded peacekeeping league of states.

The third meeting of the Ministerial Council of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) was held in Paris on November 19–20, 1963, under the chairmanship of Dr. Halyard Lange, the Norwegian Foreign Minister. During the discussion on economic growth the Council took note of the improvement in the prospects for economic growth in member countries since the end of 1962, especially in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. It was expected that the increase in gross national product (GNP) of the OECD area for the period 1960–1964 would correspond to the growth target of 50 percent set in 1961 for the ten-year period beginning with 1960. Because of the persistent gap between the industrialized countries and those that were in the process of development, the Council considered that OECD and its more industrialized members should continue to devote their attention and cooperation to the development problems of the less developed members. The ministers noted in particular that a new Spanish development program would be inaugurated in 1964.

The thirteenth session of the Ministerial Council of the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) was held in Teheran on April 7–8, 1965, under the chairmanship of Abbas Aram, Foreign Minister of Iran. Others attending the session were Muhammad Shoaib, Pakistan's Minister of Finance; Hasan Esat Isik, Foreign Minister of Turkey; Michael Stewart, the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary; and Dean Rusk, Secretary of State of the United States. The Council's session had been preceded by a meeting of the CENTO Military Committee, held in London on March 30–31, 1965.