POSSIBLE SUSPENSION OF ISRAEL

Could I just go back to another point on this one thing?

Senator PERCY. Yes.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I really meant to say, and I didn't say this morning, I have talked to a number of U.N. Ambassadors from major countries who are on the Bureau of Nonalined. It just happened, I was not seeking them out. One came to Harvard, for example, and talked to us at lunch. I asked, they were asked about this Israeli situation. It would surprise you and not entirely encourage you to know the degree to which they say nothing like that is going to happen, don't worry about it, you know. It is coming right down the line at them and because they would not want to be disagreeable and say something unpleasant and give you bad news, they say "Don't worry." Well, of course, they are not going to worry because they have their jobs anyway, but obviously it would be a terrible thing and it might indeed happen, and this, of course, is the whole question, I think, with respect to things like the charter as well. The U.N. is the place at which decisions can be made, of certain kinds, but they are always actually made in capitals and we should not, cannot do an effective job at the U.N. if we think about it 3 months a year, it is a year-around job.

LESSONS OF MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS

Senator PERCY. I understand that this morning you did talk about the multinationals. I serve on the Multinational Subcommittee and obviously we don't spend our time in the subcommittee looking at the good things. The subcommittee points out the ills, the problems of ITT and Chile, the problems of Gulf Oil, now the problems of Northrup in the Gulf States, and so we go.

The process that we have here is one that tries to look always at what is wrong and correct it.

Do you feel as a future Ambassador to the U.N. that you can somehow get across the story that multinationals are a means of carrying technology and scientific knowhow into developing countries? When they get public funds from the development banks, very seldom do they get the kind of technology and knowhow that flows from the MNC's. How do we get the story across that without our multinationals, which are perhaps the most efficiently organized way of doing business that has ever been developed, that we would not have the balance-of-payments surplus which finances our defense, our foreign aid program and our raw material purchases.

Is the U.N. a forum where this story can be put across? For centuries from the days of the old charter trading corporations in the 18th century, there has always been some one criticizing business organizations. There are excesses that must be dealt with, but somehow we have to get across also that we have to live with the best business organization we can develop and try to stamp out the abuses. Business has evolved over a period of centuries to its present stage and has helped to bring about a new set of forces we have favored: decolonialization, stabilization of international currencies and freer trade.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Well, sir, if there is any subject that interests me, is how do you create, how do you get a dictionary whereby you can translate the language of economic liberalism in such ways that

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democratic socialists understand and don't just recoil from certain symbols.

I have told you, sir, when you were last in India, about the occasion I would go and call on Indian Ministers and say to them, you remember company X or Y that was here in the 1960's, they spent 3 years talking about developing a fertilizer complex, and so forth, and they would say yes. You remember it didn't work out? They broke their pick and they left.

Well, you know where they are now? I would say they are now opening up in Siberia. And if ever there was a people who could testify to the economic efficiency of these companies as producers of goods, it will be the totalitarian powers. If you remember, sir, this got to be such a seeming problem for the Communist Party of India they issued a statement, and it was an insufferable statement. They said, "Well, you see, Soviet socialism is mature and can take these encounters. Indian socialism is not mature enough." But they recognize how come we do. We say it is all right for us but not for you.

I am not a conspiratorial sort, but I say to you there is a pattern whereby the totalitarian parties in these countries, speaking also often at directions from totalitarian capitals, systematically try to keep American and European and Japanese business enterprises out of the democratic socialist countries while bringing them into their own. Why do they? Everywhere those countries exist, those parties exist, they have one basic doctrine, the only way they know how to think, Senator, and that is the worse the better. They really do believe if the thing gets worse they end up in power. And so why do they keep these companies out?

Now these companies make mistakes; there are abuses. They are just as much subject to things you know about as anything else. But they are great producers. In particular for these new nations, in short supply of managerial talent, and for good or ill a planned economy requires managerial talent. Now if they could be just inventive enough to learn how to use enterprises of this kind, keeping their socialist goals, keeping their collective beliefs, but using the productive capacity of these firms, I think we would all be a lot better off.

For the moment I say to you it is funny the communists think they are great but they don't want anybody to seemingly know this.

STRENGTHENING ECONOMIC EXPERTISE AT U.S. MISSION

Senator PERCY. Several years ago I had a feeling we ought to strengthen the economic end of the State Department and I worked with the administration introducing legislation to create a full-time Under Secretary for Economic Affairs.

My own experience at the U.N. indicated the great importance of economic issues on everyone's mind up there.

Do you feel that the U.S. Mission at the U.N. should be beefed up or strengthened in the economic area, or would you want to take a good careful analysis and look at it to see whether or not you feel it should be? If you decide it ought to be strengthened. I certainly would give every bit of support I could to you.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Let me, if I may, get a little experience in the job, but that is my disposition. The Economic and Social Council, for

example, we have always assumed is really social. But we are moving from the era, happily, of security politics to economic politics.

I would rather talk trade war than nuclear war. But the question of competence comes in and I think you have been right all along. You certainly have been one of the few people who have been saying it on either end of town and keep saying it even though I am not an economist.

STRENGTHENING U.N. SECRETARIAT

Senator PERCY. Do you feel that the U.N. Secretariat should be strengthened in any way? Do you have any feelings as to whether the role of the Secretary General could or should be strengthened?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I think, sir, that there is a problem of the career international service. They follow, the U.N. practice picked up from the League, which took its civil servants almost wholly from the British and French civil service. At the time, it was assumed these were lifetime jobs. They gave everybody 20-year contracts, every one spoke English and French and pretty high quality people came in.

I don't know that this is the case any longer at the U.N. Certainly there are people who are depressed by it. Maybe life tenure is not the logical arrangement for a new situation. I don't know why some of these new countries would want to have a first-rate man go there for the rest of his life.

I would like to note with pleasure that my colleague at Harvard, Wassily Leontief, is leaving the university and coming to New York and is going to be working on U.N. matters, doing a world inputoutput economic model. It may be the U.N. is going to find it can contract out a lot of its high quality work and get it done that way. But it is a problem.

UNIVERSALITY OF MEMBERSHIP

Senator PERCY. On membership in the U.N., we have had a great deal of testimony on the hearings that we had in the United Nations on the concept of universality of membership.

Do you support that principle in general?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I support it absolutely. There is obviously a point of de minimis, I mean

Senator PERCY. But in principle?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. But in principle.

Senator PERCY. Do you support the admission of North Vietnam and South Vietnam?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I would assume following my principles I would, but I will wait and see what my instructions are.

CHARTER OF ECONOMIC RIGHTS AND DUTIES

Senator PERCY. On the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties you indicate you have seen my comments. Our position as a country has been that we stand ready to, in accordance with article 34 of the charter, to consider revisions, modifications, and improvements, that would possibly lead toward our being able to support it rather than oppose it.

Our position has pretty much been that the initiative should come from the originator of it, Mexico, and there should be an indication

from the others, from those who have advocated and supported the charter that they want to have this accord. I look upon it as opportunity to try to bring our thinking together.

What would be your own particular feeling about what we ought to do, if anything, about the charter in the 30th General Assembly?

REVISION OF U.N. CHARTER

Mr. MOYNIHAN. My feeling is no matter what we want to do, the Russians don't. But obviously we shouldn't be adamant on this.

There are a lot of changes that need to be made in the arrangements of a world which was organized around 50 countries, which now has 138. I think the Secretary General's committee on restructing the economic activities of the U.N. was a sensible proposition on questions of voting in the bank and in the monetary fund.

I guess for the moment, sir, I would like to see this patient quieted down before we decide to operate. The U.N. Charter is there, everyone needs to feel a lot happier about the way things are going before we think of any fundamental changes. That would be my judgment. I think the American people would be scared about what might come out of opening up all possibilities.

I think I would be scared myself just now.

CHARTER OF ECONOMIC RIGHTS AND DUTIES

Senator PERCY. Right now I don't anticipate personally much will come out because the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties is like a contract which is available for two parties to sign but only one has signed it, so it is really almost an inoperative document right now and lays down principles and so forth which are not adopted by the developed part of the world and it is not binding, of course, on anyone.

U.N. ROLE IN CONVENTIONAL ARMS FIELD

Ambassador Yost testified that the United States should assume leadership in urging a larger role for the United Nations in the field of conventional arms, including arms sales.

Do you believe that this is practical and feasible?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. It is practical and it is feasible. If the United Nations has done as much as it has done on nuclear matters we have a fundamental important organization, IAEA, that is fraught with more peril than conventional arms.

How successful, how do you know until you try some of those things.

SELF-FINANCING PROPOSALS FOR U.N.

Senator PERCY. The United Nations has always had a financial crisis. It has been suggested that means be devised to assure the United Nations of self-financing by a postal tax or tax on profits from exploration of the seabed, for example.

Do you favor development of a self-financing procedure or the present procedure that we are using?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I would think that it would be appropriate. One of the great things that happened in the 20th century was the agreement

by the nations of the world the seabed belongs to the world. It is almost equivalent to the Louisiana purchase and what happened to American society in the aftermath. Once we start industrial use of the seabed I don't know why a portion of those revenues ought not to go to the United Nations, especially as the United Nations is the channel through which the overall resources are going to flow to the developing countries.

The answer in my view is "Yes," it might encourage them to get on with that.

COMMENTS ON COMMENTARY ARTICLE

Senator PERCY. Finally, I would like to ask you about the Commentary article because we did question a number of our witnesses about that, and their reactions to it. It was a highly provocative, thought-provoking piece.

Justice Goldberg indicated he feels every American representative to the United Nations from its beginning has attempted to do precisely what you recommended in the article. I add, parenthetically, he also said you are an able and gifted man.

I think what you are disagreeing with is that we had not spoken up enough in the past; he felt that we had.

Senator Lodge said "To my knowledge the U.S. representative has always done that and done quite a good job."

So here you have two previous permanent representatives in a sense defending what has been done and feeling that they had done that job adequately and the government and State Department had done an adequate job of defending our position.

Could you be a little more specific, how you would feel new policy should differ from what we have done in the past?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. First, if Arthur Goldberg says I am wrong I am wrong.

Senator PERCY. He is no longer a Justice.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Second, I think it is fair to say that Commentary article was not written to describe how we should behave in the U.N. it was talking about what kind of relationship we can have with the Democratic Socialist countries in the world, and it arises out of a particular concern of mine that there is a streak of anti-Americanism in that doctrine and that we have to be aware of that and work at countering it because there is nothing more essential than the good reputation of American Democracy to the success of those democracies. We are not like them in some respects, but we would hope to be like them on the fundamental issues. To let ourselves be systematically degraded and disgraced in public opinion in those countries is to let the totalitarians slowly win the advantage, and I would say respectfully to Ambassadors Yost and Lodge and Justice Goldberg, that I think the fury of these sentiments, the temper has heated up very much in recent years.

As recently as 10 years ago this was not the style of New York on these matters or these international conferences. It is something new, there is something going on in the world and my feeling is that it is no longer a peripheral undertone but rather increasingly asserted, aggressively stated, and reputed propaganda.