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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.

We are in a propaganda war. We have to respond with a comparable level of effort to that which is directed against us. I think the effort is much greater than it was.

NOMINEE'S INTENDED POSTURE AT THE U.N.

Senator PERCY. Maybe I could paraphrase the concern that I have heard from people associated with the U.N., columnists that follow the U.N., that they are concerned that in your role as the permanent representative that suddenly we are going to be almost in the position that the Soviet Union and China find themselves, constantly attacking each other.

This has not just come from observers. I would like to read to you Ambassador Yost's exact words. He said:

I, like Justice Goldberg, have responded very frequently myself. I don't know how Moynihan got under this misapprehension. I would differ from him only in the suggestion that crops up in one or two places in that article, and that is that we would engage in rather abrasive personalities vis-a-vis in responding. I see little advantage in that and there is too much of that in the U.N. already. I think one should respond very firmly and clearly and in defense of our positions but not in a strident or vicious tone.

Would you want to clarify how you would verbalize, because I think it is going to be a refreshing change from sometimes in the past to have a permanent representative who will really fight to say what he believes.

I think people will probably look to you to express yourself up there, but would you intend to take a strident tone? I am not exactly sure Ambassador Yost interpreted your article to mean that. He has very high regard for you, obviously.

Would you want to clarify the kind of tone that you would intend taking in order to put across a clear firm position for the United States, but not to suddenly change the total posture we have developed over a period of many years?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I agree with Ambassador Yost. You had occasion to visit out in India where we have a lot of these problems. You didn't see me going around lecturing Indians. But we would make it our business in India that when someone said something quite out of the order with respect to the United States where there was a Government connection, let the Government know we had heard it and we did not think it was helpful to India, and it wasn't helpful to us. It seems to me that the first object of American policy with respect to this kind of statement and accusation is to see that it is not made, and when it is made, the second object should be to see that it is stopped, and if that can't be, then the third necessity of responding comes into play.

Senator, it is a very simple fact that for too many years intolerable things have been said about the American Democracy in the U.N., and when the effort would be made to go back to the Nation's capital and make some refutation of it, it would get lost on the fourth or fifth floors of the Department of State. Country officers would say, "Well, we have an aid program just beginning to start up there so let's not get that into a mess."

It is exactly if you have an aid program starting up that it ought to be known, and how we ought to ask could you want to take help from

a country of which you have such a low opinion as evidenced by what your Ambassador in New York said.

Those countries can't have it both ways and many times they want to. Nor can our Government separate the affairs of the U.N. from the other practices of diplomacy.

Our Government, I think the Secretary believes this, I think the President believes this, feels that we can say, it is only words and surely you don't take them seriously. Yes, we do take them seriously, we take the reputation of our democracy seriously.

Among other things we know that there is more sustained activities and interest of the totalitarians than to undermine that reputation.

DEGREE OF ACHIEVEMENT OF SPECIAL WORLD CONFERENCES

Senator PERCY. Richard Gardner commented specifically on certain parts of your article, and he said, for instance, that he disagreed with your statement that the great global conferences on population, food, and environment were disasters.

Would you care to comment on that?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Well, he disagreed in the report of which he was rapporteur very specifically, said let's stop having these great global conferences out in nowhere and bring them, these issues, back to the General Assembly.

The specific here, Senator, which is that if you get an interesting subject and it is interesting enough and glamorous enough-environment, population, food, that somebody wants to pay attention to itthat is exactly the time not to pull it out of the General Assembly and have a meeting in Stockholm or Bucharest or Rome. Get a whole new set of delegates, delegates who never have to see each other for any other purposes, so they can come with the most strident views of their own, and if they make enemies, say, of us, then they aren't going to be the same people who have to come around in a week's time.

The way you gentlemen in the Senate have debates on Tuesday about this and on a Wednesday you are going to have to debate about something else, and so you don't end your relationship at the end of the day.

I don't want to hold to any one characterization of those two conferences but I think the proposition of keeping those important subjects close to the General Assembly is a good idea.

Senator PERCY. Did you use the word "disaster”?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. I don't remember using it but I haven't read the thing.

Senator PERCY. This is not in quotes of yours, it was a quote from Richard Gardner, and I am not sure that you did say "disaster." I don't remember that. But the implication was that they didn't work out. Let's put it that way.

WORLD POPULATION CONFERENCE

As you recall, I went to India via Bucharest and the Population Conference. I was rather impressed with the fact that it was taken out of New York. It was the best attended international conference the world has ever seen, more nations were there; and they did come up with a plan of action. It was a spirited debate.

As I went through the subcontinent, India particularly, the subject of population was moving to the front pages. It was given very, very prominent space, just at a time when I was so concerned about the budget being cut in India for population planning, so I really felt the couple of million dollars spent on that conference was more than repaid by just the fact that it was given great attention. We had a chance to debate the great issues among the major powers and ultimately the conference developed a plan of action which has now been adopted by the United Nations General Assembly.

I would like your evaluation of what you think of a conference like that. I was rather impressed. I went skeptical. I came back thinking it was well worth it for the tremendous impact that it had.

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Well, sir, I could be wrong on this. It won't be the first time. I have a fairly clear view of the reason I was not happy with the outcome, was that it seemed to me to have dealt a very serious blow to the sort of straight out population control program which countries such as India had begun the first to do so was India for better or worse. They were plugging away, cutting appropriations here and there, but committed to the idea that that contraception is the way, is one way to lower birth rates.

The fundamental assertion of Bucharest-which was probably in the large an accurate assertion, although in the ways it was put forward I am not so sure-was that population control comes in the wake of economic development. Well, I am not so sure that is true. I am not so sure that is true.

I can argue otherwise in five or six cultures that the reverse is true. And in any event it is a curiously debilitating argument. It says don't worry about your IUD programs and don't worry about your condom program and don't worry about this other business, because as soon as we get some steel mills here we are going to be all right.

Now look, you know the rates at which steel mills get built and the rates at which babies get born. I don't want to be invidious. but I visited Peking on my way back to the United States, and in Peking they couldn't have been more concrete to the effect that you have to be 28 years old if you are a male and 25 if you are female in order to marry, and that 1 child is thought not too few, 2 is quite enough, and 3 is not permitted.

Now, that seems to me population control and yet was that the tone of speech you heard from those delegates?

Senator PERCY. What was the question?

Mr. MOYNIHAN. Did the delegates at Bucharest from that part of the world come to you and say, come to that meeting and say population control is good for you?

I thought they said population control was an imperialist, capitalist scheme.

Senator PERCY. Well, actually I met with the Indian Minister of Health and Family Planning at that conference.

He seemed really quite pleased and he was the one who encouraged Prime Minister Gandhi to write the special letter to the heads of all villages in India, but he felt this provided leverage to him.

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