185. Editorial Note
On the afternoon of September 23, Ambassador Wadsworth addressed the U.N. General Assembly. Declaring that he spoke “on behalf of and with the authorization of the Secretary of State,” Wadsworth responded to the speech which Chairman Khrushchev had made before the General Assembly that morning. (See Document 183)
Wadsworth refuted Khrushchev’s comments about the RB–47 incident and East-West disarmament negotiations and questioned his remarks about colonialism. He then addressed Khrushchev’s statements about the United Nations and the Secretary-General:
“But there is a second and possibly even more serious crisis, a crisis which consists of an attempt to destroy the office and the very structure of the Secretary-General and the Secretariat and through it to destroy the United Nations.
“This is the same sustained crisis which the Soviet Union posed at the recent meetings of the Security Council and in the emergency General Assembly which closed just before this 15th General Assembly opened, and in both these bodies the United Nations stood firmly and the Assembly firmly endorsed the stand. The crisis has now been sharpened by a direct attack from the head of the Soviet state himself against the office of the Secretary-General.
“The Soviet Union has sought to crush another Secretary-General, Mr. Trygve Lie, because he stood up against Communist aggression in Korea. It is now attempting to crush the very office of the Secretary-General itself, in keeping with the philosophy of what we might term ‘what we cannot control we will destroy.’
“The United Nations, Mr. President, must face this crisis head on. If it does not, it will fail.”
For full text of Wadsworth’s statement, see U.N. doc. A/PV.870.