286. Editorial Note
On December 16, at the request of the Representatives of India and Yugoslavia, the U.N. General Assembly resumed discussion of the situation in the Congo. An eight-power draft resolution was submitted on December 16 by Ceylon, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Morocco, the United Arab Republic, and Yugoslavia (U.N. doc. A/L.331). That draft resolution, as revised on December 19 (U.N. doc. A/L.331/Rev.l), declared that the United Nations should “henceforth implement its mandate fully” to prevent breaches of peace and security and [Page 636] to restore and maintain law and order and that a standing delegation appointed by and representing the General Assembly be located in the Congo to cooperate with the Secretary-General’s special representative. It also urged the immediate release of all political prisoners, the immediate convening of Parliament with U.N. protection, and measures to prevent the Congolese Armed Forces from interfering in the country’s political life, demanded the immediate withdrawal of all Belgian military and quasi-military personnel, and recommended that all necessary economic and technical assistance should be provided promptly through the United Nations so that it would not be used as an instrument for continuing foreign intervention.
On December 17, the United States and the United Kingdom proposed a draft resolution (U.N. doc. A/L.332) that requested the Secretary-General to “continue to discharge the mandate entrusted to him by the United Nations,” to “continue to use the presence and the machinery of the United Nations” to assist the Congo in restoring and maintaining law and order throughout its territory, and to “continue his vigorous efforts” to ensure that no foreign military personnel were introduced into the Congo in violation of U.N. resolutions. It called upon all states to refrain from providing military assistance to the Congo except through the United Nations during the period of U.N. military assistance, requested the Secretary-General to assist the Congo’s Chief of State in establishing conditions in which Parliament could meet in security and freedom from interference, and repeated the provisions of the four-power resolution on human rights vetoed by the Soviet Union a few days earlier. (See Document 281)
The texts of both resolutions, along with the text of a statement made by U.S. Representative James J. Wadsworth before the General Assembly on December 17, are in American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1960, pages 619–627.