D A - CIR C,i J L AT! N G YUN Tape APRIL 16. 1990 AMBASSADOR ABBA EBAN NEW YORK CITY SUTTERLIN. Interviewer Table of Contents UN/SA : I. UN Role in the Establishment of Israel Transition of the Palestine Question to the UN 1-3 Soviet Policy 3-4; 24-27 The UN Special Committee on Palestine 4-15 The Status of Jerusalem 11-15 UN Constabulary for Palestine 16-20 US position on Partition 20-24 The Attitude of Trygve Lie 27-28 Isr a e l i Attitude toward the UN 28-34 II. The 1956 Suez War Isra e l i Motivations 34-36 Lester Pearson's Contribution 36-40 The Understanding on the presence of UNEF 40-43 Assessment of UNEF 44-45 III. The Attitudes of US Presidents Toward the UN Role in the Middle East 49-54 IV. Impressions of Kurt Waldheim 54-55 YUN Tape APRIL 16. 1990 AMBASSADOR ABBA EBAN NEW YORK CITY SUTTERLIN, Interviewer JSS Ambassador Eban, I'd li k e to f i r s t express appreciation for your participation in this oral history project, and i f I may I would l i k e to begin at the creation, so to speak, to use Dean Acheson's phrase, and take you back to the special session of the General Assembly which convened in A p r i l , 1947. At that time the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine was established and I believe that you accompanied that committee as representing the Jewish agency when i t went to the Middle East. Two of the Secretariat members accompanying that committee subsequently were awarded Nobel Peace Prizes, Garcia Robles and Ralph Bunche. Eban Robles received the Nobel Prize for what? He didn't get the Peace Prize. JSS Yes, he did, I think. Eban I'd l i k e to look into that. He was very minor. JSS Well, that was exactly my question, how did the committee work in terms of the accompanying Secretariat people? Did the Secretariat people have very much influence on the committee's findings, or not? Eban I'd l i k e to say f i r s t of a l l that for the United Nations, 2 h i s t o r i c a l l y , this was a very big challenge, i t was the f i r s t important problem brought to the General Assembly. The United Nations Security Council had to deal with crises, especially Iran, and later on Indonesia. But here was one of the founders of the United Nations ca l l i n g for a recommendation on a major international issue with the widest implications. The decision was taken i n London in February and i t took us, the Zionists, by surprise. The assumption was that the British were somehow going to carry on with this responsibility, we knew that they were getting impatient through their own frustration. And Bevan, who was the central character of course, was extremely impulsive. We also knew that many people in Britain were asking, why should we British continue to carry this charge when no less a voice than Winston Churchill, the leader of the opposition, had said that we should stop this squalid war against the Jews; either carry out the mandate in i t s original terms or else hand i t back to the United Nations, or at least get the United States to come in instead, but he did use the words the United Nations as the successor to the League of Nations. Then this obviously was a concrete po s s i b i l i t y . Nevertheless, in February when the British announced their intention there was surprise and no elation because from the f i r s t examination of the problem, the conclusion from the Jewish point of view 3 was that we would fare even less well under the United Nations than we would under the Mandatory Power. And we started making the count. JSS It came really early, i f I may say. Eban It certainly did. The Arabs began with 5 or 6 votes in the Moslem countries. We thought that the Latin American countries would be dominated by Catholic theology, that the Jews ought to be a wandering people forever. Nothing to hope for, obviously, from the Soviet Union which regarded Zionism as a kind of conspiracy against the Soviet Union. Nevertheless i t was a new challenge in the open arena and i t was completely different working with a multilateral international organization than in a kind of exclusive relationship with one power - two completely different techniques. Therefore we approached this with a kind of innocence, and apprehension, and were surprised at the momentum which had then developed. The f i r s t meeting was in New York and i t only had a procedural purpose, which was to appoint a committee which would investigate and then make i t s recommendation. It became very substantive not only because most countries gave some indication of their predilections or tendencies, but because the Soviet Union ignored completely the normal procedural limitations and made a very dramatic and far-reaching announcement of a change in i t s policy. In fact the Soviet Union was the f i r s t 4 great power which openly said that Israel should be a Jewish state - admittedly i s an alternative to the ideal of l i v i n g together. In expressing skepticism about that, they said quite openly that i f the two parties cannot l i v e together either federally, or as a unitary state, then Palestine should be divided into two states. At that stage, already the United Nations sprang into the headlines as the forum from which a very monumental transition was made in the policy of one of the great powers. The Soviet Union was persistent and constant in this for the next 2 or 3 years. The other innovation (and the last occasion on which I believe i t was used) was the deliberate attribution of mediation to a committee of medium or small powers. Since then one i s familiar with great power mediation, one i s familiar with individuals l i k e Frank Graham, like Gunnar V. Jarring, and others in the Cyprus problem - usually either Secretariat people or people brought in as the servants of the Secretary-General. One i s familiar with the Secretary-General, himself, mediating conflicts as Hammarskjold did, and as the present incumbent has done since. But I don't find anything in United Nations history to compare with the idea of eleven member nations, medium and small powers. I don't know how the idea arose, probably because the super powers didn't want to show their hands too early. And these eleven member 5 people who were represented - they were not people who were central figures in their countries' diplomacy. Here and there was a judge l i k e Sandstrom and Rand; somebody with colonial experience l i k e the Dutchman, Ambassador Blom. Here and there would be a member of the Foreign Service l i k e Hood, the Australian. I would say i t wasn't the most b r i l l i a n t array of talent one could imagine. Few of them had wide international experience and therefore the Secretariat became important. And i t begins with Trygve Lie who was a very a c t i v i s t Secretary- General. The fact that Hammarskjold was even more ac t i v i s t has tended to obscure this fact but he took an extremely assertive view of his role. F i r s t of a l l , he was the f i r s t Secretary-General, and therefore would set the tone. The three people he appointed were Victor Hoo, Bunche and Robles. Stavropoulos was the legal advisor. It became clear rather early on that although Bunche was Number 2 he was, in fact, the central figure, I think, by reason of being an American as distinct from being a Taiwan Chinese. Also Victor Hoo was a very passive sort of a person. He reminded me of what some people were later to say about U Thant. When i t was suggested that he was inscrutable, somebody said, well there's nothing there to "scrute". I can't remember in Victor Hoo any expression of an attitude, while Bunche was to be taken very seriously - a decisive, dynamic 6 character. I t i s clear that his influence was great on people l i k e the Chairman, Sandstrom, and on Justice Rand, who became a really dominant figure and was the f i r s t to move the committee in the direction of partition. Here were the two very effervescent Latin Americans, Granados and Fabregal; and the quieter Latin American, Salazar from Peru. Obviously to pull that eleven together (and you know that in England eleven i s a soccer or a cricket team) the Secretariat had to be very active. There was a multiplicity and diversity of approaches. For example, Granados was palpably anti-British because of the Belize problem. The tendency we would have thought of many of the others would have been rather one of deference to the mandatory power because there was Canada and there was Australia at a time when they were only just beginning to feel complete sovereignty within the Br i t i s h Commonwealth and Holland - these are countries which had taken refuge in Britain during the Occupation. And Czechoslovakia was s t i l l the Czechoslovakia of Masaryk, not of the Comintern. The Secretariat, therefore, in defining the agenda and in reaching consensus, was very active with Bunche as the Secretary. JSS And would you say that they had influence - Bunche in particular- on the move toward partition as the recommendation of the Committee? Eban F i r s t of a l l , partition was already a fashionable 7 doctrine because the British themselves had pioneered i t in the 1930s. They were under the influence of one of them, S i r Reginald (inaudible) , whose approach was much more analytical-intellectual than i t was diplomatic-political. The area of his discipline at Oxford was the conditions in which nations could or could not form a state together. Later he was to relate that to the Indian problem and was probably the author of the Atlee Commission report which led to the partition. He was interested in why, i f i t was possible in Switzerland, i f i t was possible in Canada and Belgium, why was i t not possible in India and in Palestine? Sir Reginald thought that the idea that this i s a nation, that the Jews and Arabs constitute a single entity and can bring themselves to have a single allegiance was just grotesque. He once put i t to me graphically. He said "I've spoken this morning to Ben Gurion and to Jamal Hussein. For you to t e l l me that both would salute the same flag or be responsive to the same set of values, i t ' s nonsense. And he made this historic statement: the idea that there's such a thing as Palestinian nationality i s a mischievous pretense. There is no such thing. We are quite different from one another and we can only therefore maintain a unitary state by suppression, words which would become prophetic. In other words, you have to deny either one or the other, an expression of 8 nationality or a unitary state which can only be maintained as a unitary state by increasingly harsh repression, something that Israel i s finding out now. Because each of these entities was s u f f i c i e n t l y turbulent and individualist and particularist, not to be digested by the other, neither of them could subdue the other, but neither of them could accept the other. So when Gromyko said "partition", he was saying something familiar. The United States at one stage (through Dean Acheson) had said in response to Zionist pressure in 194 6 that one of the proposals - in fact the Zionist program - was partition. The phrase was (I remember because I had just joined the Zionist Secret Service) "a viable Jewish state in an adequate part of Palestine". This was a compromise of the great Israel idea. And i f that was a Zionist proposal i t had been a British one, very eloquently defended. The British had never abandoned i t intellectually, they just abandoned i t because of appeasement. They just didn't want to do what was necessary to put i t into effect. And therefore, because of Arab interest they just abandoned i t because of strategic nationalist egoistic interests. They never thought i t was wrong, and in fact tried to revive i t in 1944 when Winston Churchill appointed a commission under the chairmanship of Herbert Morrison, a very senior cabinet member. And what they did was to c a l l for 9 partition in November 1944. When Lord Hoyne was murdered by one of the terr o r i s t groups, Churchill in anger abandoned the whole business, the Egyptians hanged these two people and the partition committee dispersed. So i t wasn't a sudden kind of innovation. And i t was natural that when the Committee met (and I think this was the influence of the Secretariat) Bunche l a i d down the po s s i b i l i t i e s , and at the end when i t came to Geneva this was how they analyzed i t : What are the options? The whole of Palestine as an Arab State, the whole of Palestine as a Jewish state, Palestine as a federated entity under a unitary system of partition. The discussions were pretty well channeled into these four options - I should have also l i s t e d continuation of the mandate. In other words, they wrote down these options and studied them in the course of their business. The Secretariat had a very large role. Once they defined the nature of the problem (as everybody knows in science, scholarship and even in legal judgments) they have gone a long way towards narrowing i t down because some of the options become obviously unfeasible. JSS Mr. Horowitz I believe was your colleague at that point. Eban That was an important innovation because this was the f i r s t time that Zionism was recognized in the United 10 Nations system - by appointing two li a i s o n officers who were of the Jewish Agency. The United Nations really said, well the Jewish Agency i s the representative body; they didn't ask i f we had any elections. The reason why there was no argument was that the Jewish Agency already had an international status that derived from the jurisprudence of the League of Nations. The mandate of the League of Nations said that there shall be recognized or established a Jewish Agency, with which the mandatory power shall cooperate. One of the great achievements of the Weizmann was not only to get the Balfour Declaration - the Zionist Policy - endorsed by Britain but also to get a unanimous League of Nations to endorse the Zionist program and the status of the Zionist organization. My feeling i s that the Secretariat had a great part in giving conspicuous place to partition as one of the outcomes. JSS And you, representing the Jewish Agency, did you at that point assume that partition would in fact be the desirable recommendation, and did you Eban Yes. This was the banner that we carried. We wanted that and nothing else. We no longer wanted a continuation of the mandate because Ernest Bevin was very abrasive toward the Zionist point of view. Nobody understood why he was with such radical extremism. It can only be understood in terms of individual psychology. 11 I believe in the role of the personality of history. So we didn't want that to continue since i t would eventually have led to an Arab state. We didn't want an Arab state in the whole and we didn't want the kind of federal state i n which the Zionists would be a rather minor kind of province, predominantly under Arab rule. Ben Gurion and Weizmann - though they were not always in agreement with each other, were the two figures that counted, especially with the United Nations Committee. I would say that Weizmann counted more than Ben Gurion, even though he was no longer in office. That was regarded as the pro- Jewish, the pro-Zionist thing to do and when Gromyko made his statement, i t didn't sound so crazy because i f in February we had put the Russians in the negative column, they were not a l l i e s . It began to look as i f you could get a majority. We really needed the United States and we were pretty well home. We knew the United States had a bias towards i t although i t was not very popular in the State Department. JSS Let me ask you.in that connection about the geographic divisions, so to speak, and in particular about Jerusalem. The recommendation of the Special CommitteeCommission with regard to Jerusalem was a special one, and I wondered whether that was welcomed, accepted at that point, by the Jewish Agency, by the Jewish side, by you, or did you make an effort to alter 12 that particular aspect? Eban It's very strange when you look at the situation from the perspective of today how l i t t l e passion Zionists invested in that question. And in a very notable book published by the I s r a e l i Amos Alon he draws attention to the fact that the founding fathers of Zionism had some reservations about Jerusalem. For example, Theodore Herzl said the capital of his visionary state should be in Haifa, and Weizmann used to say that Jerusalem would never be truly ours. He f e l t uncomfortable there and always wanted to get back to Rehovoth. A l l these priests, rabbis, archdeacons and patriarchs, the whole thing reeked of incense and he didn't feel comfortable as a Zionist. When Ben Gurion made his f i r s t v i s i t to Palestine in the early 1900s he didn't even mention going to Jerusalem. For him the central facts were the newest settlements - the kibbutzim and the moshavim - and therefore, the assumption was that the world wouldn't give i t up anyway, and that i t would be very good fortune that i t shouldn't be given to the Arabs although our weapon was the view of the majority. And when the Committee said corpus separatum of which the fate would be decided later on (which meant that the majority would decide after 10 years) i t was accepted with tranquility and the Israelis established a l l their institutions in Tel Aviv: the Knesset in Tel Aviv, government houses in 13 Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv was the capital in the Isr a e l i eyes. If that had been l e f t alone, i f the United Nations had just l e f t i t alone instead of (in i t s resolution in 1949) wanting to impose a government and a trusteeship council in 1950, i t could have gone on like that. The man who was the f i r s t secretary of the Isra e l i cabinet, Zeev Schiff, recorded in his book he never remembers anybody in the provisional Isr a e l i government sighing with sadness and grief that we didn't have Jerusalem. It was kind of a docile acceptance of this fate. The price from the I s r a e l i point of view was that i f i t was going to be United Nations, we wouldn't have to fight then, and at least i t would be safe. It was only when that assumption collapsed - the idea of internationalization - when i t became clear that the United Nations could not assure peace, tranquility or security... JSS But by the time the United Nations, as you say, put forward the idea of the international administration of Jerusalem Israel was in control of the western part of the c i t y . Eban Yes, of the western part. The fact i s that we had the majority there; but as the war developed Jerusalem was our weakest point. F i r s t of a l l i t was very easily isolated from the rest of the country. If you go along the road now and you see some of these rusty old half? tracks that indicate the fight to get in. It could be 14 easily cut off because of i t s geographical position. One part in 1948 was under siege. On my television show I have an interview with General Herzog who describes how we were down to X l i t e r s of water a day to eat and drink. It was a very precarious position. I think the fact that our military people admitted that i t would be very hard to defend the partition state i f you also had Jerusalem. There was also of course the precedent of the British partition plan of 1937 which also made Jerusalem an international enclave. There were even those who wanted a Jewish state who didn't envisage giving i t Jerusalem. There was so much jubilation about getting the state. There were some opponents of partition who said "what are you doing without the eternal Jerusalem?" But Ben Gurion and Weizmann didn't worry about i t . JSS Now these many years later with a l l of Jerusalem under Is r a e l i administration i t s t i l l remains a problem, though, as evidenced by the recent statement by President Bush and the reaction to that in Israel, and so forth. Eban Well the powers had really gotten used to the idea of the partition of Jerusalem. If in 1967, King Hussein had l e f t i t alone, Western Jerusalem would be the capital. In my speech in the Trusteeship Council in 1950 I said, why not leave i t alone? The Jordanians want to leave i t alone, we want to leave i t alone. The Jordanians are just as hostile to internationalization as they are to 15 Jewish control. If Hussein had l e f t i t alone in 1967, i t could to this day be a divided ci t y . Which doesn't mean i t couldn't be united some other time. But again, in each case the Jewish reaction was one of defiance, "leave us alone and we'll leave you alone". When the United Nations fa i l e d to establish security then the Jews would be perfectly satisfied with Western Jerusalem. The endless error on the part of the Arabs, especially Hussein, was to be drawn by Nasser into the war and bombarding Jerusalem. I experienced that personally and have a collection of shrapnel in my garden. The reaction was "OK, i f that's the way you want i t then we'll see who has the better military organization. In two days Jerusalem was in our hands, the seventh of June. JSS Mr. Ambassador, the ensuing years, have you ever thought or do you think now of an alternate solution for Jerusalem in the event there could be a peace? Eban What i s completely out of the question i s this very naive idea of international administration by the United Nations. I explained that in my speech, I think in March 1950. I know i t was then because in an Isr a e l i paper, Maariv. which publishes a column "40 years ago" there was recently a headline in which I am denouncing the idea of removing the existing administration and appointing a governor. I think the United Nations has developed to a point that the idea of administering t e r r i t o r i e s and 16 population i s completely overtaken. The trusteeship system i s obviously purely informal. Somaliland and a few colonies were probably the last. The trusteeship provisions of the Charter were never really put into effect. The idea of what i s called evolution to s e l f - government and independence didn't happen that way. The United Nations does have an important role in decolonization by supporting the idea of self-government against the idea of colonial rule. But administratively i t never brought any opposing kind of system. If i t had i t would be governing in a l l kinds of places, even to this day, in Hong Kong and God knows where. JSS To continue on a somewhat different subject, what was the Jewish reaction to the idea that was put forward partly by Trygve Lie quite early of an international military force to maintain order in Palestine? This was amplified later I think in the third session of the General Assembly, when Trygve Lie proposed sp e c i f i c a l l y a constabulary, an armed constabulary? Eban The weak point of the November resolution was what was called implementation. Here was a very surgical operation being suggested and the assumption was that i t would be carried out peacefully. On what was that based when one of the parties didn't want to have anything to do with i t ? Who was going to keep order? And there was something rather unreal in that respect about the 17 November recommendation. It was so detailed in other respects: the structure of governments and democracy, self-determination and c i v i l rights, but not going into the question of the enforcement. Of course this reflects the general weakness of the United Nations system and especially the General Assembly. Later we were going to see the attempt to make the General Assembly a surrogate for the Security Council in the Uniting for Peace resolution. But Trygve Lie was actually completely correct, he was in support of the partition - very actively. Incidentally, both he and Hammarskjold showed a predilection for taking positions. There was always a Secretariat view. He was for the partition of Palestine, he was for the participation of Communist China. Trygve Lie really didn't have this hesitation. Just as there were governments which had their position, the Secretaries-General had their positions. And usually on very sensitive issues which, of course, stirred up the enmity of those opposed to i t and the admiration of those who agreed. We frankly admired Trygve Lie, he was our a l l y . But the idea of a constabulary - The United States was very apprehensive. In fact i t lead to their temporary abandonment of the partition idea because i t really meant that they were going to take over the Bri t i s h role. What's involved in a constabulary i s this: you enforce, you punish, you provoke, you enrage, 18 you arrest people and put them in j a i l . The United States, one must remember, was very reluctant about assuming the Bri t i s h role. They wished to God the Bri t i s h would stay where they were. There was a kind of contradiction i n American policy which enraged the Br i t i s h . On the one hand they maintained an anti- colonial rhetoric a l l the time and Churchill was i r r i t a t e d by Roosevelt. On the other hand, when i t came to the point, they wished the Bri t i s h would just get on with i t i n Greece, Turkey, Palestine, and Iran because so long as they were there, the United States didn't have to enlarge the range of i t s responsibilities. By 1947 I think the Truman Doctrine for Greece and Turkey was already enunciated. But not only was i t unrealistic, having a constabulary, even the partition commission would not be allowed in. This was a very interesting development, the Bri t i s h h o s t i l i t y to partition, because logi c a l l y and h i s t o r i c a l l y they were the authors of the idea. It took the form of this five-member commission - Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Bolivia, and the Philippines ? and they wouldn't even l e t them go into the area to carry out the partition resolution. A l l they did was to make a judgment that the Arabs were at fault in defying the resolution. They were called the five lonely pilgrims. I don't know exactly what Trygve Lie was doing there; he seemed to choose the least significant people he could. 19 There were much more significant Latin countries than Bolivia and Panama - and much more significant countries i n Europe than Denmark. At any rate this commission met and i t was quite obvious by the end of 1947 that the matter would be decided on the ba t t l e f i e l d , not by some United Nations enforcement. You must remember that there had already been a collapse of the Charter provisions on the Military Staff. They were meeting ridiculously every month, very high officers - American, Soviet, British, French and Chinese. Then after 5 minutes they said "we have noted that we have met" and went home. So the idea of the United Nations as an enforcing agency had been weakened in general and therefore the idea that in the particular case of Palestine there would be a United Nations constabulary was really logical but unreal. JSS And so on the Jewish side you did not attribute great importance to the idea. Eban It was obviously not going to happen and we would obviously have to fight for ourselves. The Arabs understood i t . I talked with (inaudible) and he said "you w i l l have to fight, and i f you don't win, you won't get your state. And we're going to try and prevent i t . The United Nations had not bui l t the kind of image that would reassure. I don't think that there was any serious discussion in Washington or Britain. The British were afraid that, in the end i f you 20 said constabulary/ they would be asked to stay on. And they really didn't want to stay on. I understood because i f they had given up India, what's the use of Palestine? Palestine was regarded as one of a series of bases. Malta, Cyprus, and Palestine were stepping stones on the way to India, and i f you don't have India, what's the point of having the others? You would be on your way to nowhere. If you are going to have a major decolonization, these places weren't important enough for 100,000 Brit i s h troops to be tied down there when the war was ended. It was a country which could sustain massive losses i f there were a war, but the war had ended. And they were getting k i l l e d and the public just wouldn't stand for t. Or they said, "what for?" and i t was very hard to say what for. It wasn't a source of mineral wealth or o i l . I would say i t was l i k e a beehive without honey. You've got the stings and you've got nothing out of i t . JSS Mr. Ambassador, you mentioned that the idea of the constabulary might have had some effect on Washington and the move away that Washington took from the partition idea. You have discussed this in your autobiography of course. It remains somewhat mysterious how the United States could have switched positions so suddenly without any warning and quite contrary to the indication that President Truman had given before. I wondered, are you 21 s t i l l inclined to attribute this i n i t i a t i v e in the Security Council to the influence of the State Department on American policy, or have you gained new perception on the situation? Eban A l l the new perceptions support the idea that in this case the State Department was not very careful about getting presidential support. Truman made a dramatic gesture on the 14th of May. There's a book now in the bookstores about General Marshall. Also in my interview with Clark C l i f f o r d in the television series the virulence of Marshall's opposition to i t surprises me very much. He's almost insubordinate. JSS To the proposed partition? Eban Yes. When the recognition of Israel was made he really was insubordinate to his own president. He said " i t ' s just p o l i t i c s , and i f you do this I might not vote for you". And Truman who revered Marshall said "OK, that's one vote less". It had to be fought very heavily. In March why they abandoned i t I think was clear. F i r s t of a l l they didn't think we were going to make i t . You must remember that this I s r a e l i i n v i n c i b i l i t y was a myth. Our military situation was very, very bad, and we were going to lose, and even our own Haganah leaders were saying that i t ' s not sure that we can do this. Here we are only fighting volunteers, and not the o f f i c i a l Arab armies. They hadn't reached the frontier. Yet Jerusalem was cut 22 off, the Negev was cut off. The Arabs had seized points of communication, the Jewish state was fragmented. The Arabs very cleverly didn't try to defeat the Isr a e l i armies but to seize communication points. The United States was watching us with skepticism, and that's on the local scene. They thought that was going to be a massacre and they would have to come in and rescue us. They were getting reports from people li k e Marshall, General Montgomery, saying in March that the Jews were really ( i t ' s a slang phrase) they've got a hot potato there. They can't do i t . The French were always saying i t was absolutely impossible . On the international level the Soviet war pressure was intense, there was a prospect of war. Czechoslovakia was invaded, NATO was established. People li k e the Pentagon - Forrestal - were saying the Arabs were beginning to cancel o i l contracts. So there was a feeling that i t was beyond the pos s i b i l i t y , beyond Israel's power, to implement partition and i t was against American's interest to fight for i t . So they said, "let's have another look." The other look was a l i t t l e b i t absurd -the trusteeship - but at any rate, l e t us halt the dynamism with which the state i s established. Truman was surprised because he had met Weizmann the day before, and they talked about partition, partition, partition. C l i f f o r d i s going to illuminate this in my own book. The next morning he 23 reads in the paper - and I don't know what happened. I think after November 29 Truman thought the matter settled and he would go on to deal with other matters. But he l e f t the whole thing alone. It doesn't figure in history very much between November and March. And then when he heard of this, "oh my God, what's happened?" And i t ' s then that he very conscience-stricken, about to see Weizmann, sent John Rosenmann (Judge Samuel I. Rosenmann) to see Weizmann to say " i f you've decided nevertheless to establish a state I ' l l recognize i t . I won't take responsibility, but i f you'll take responsibility, i t ' s OK. So the gap was very strong, but this description of the recognition meeting on May 12, this biography of Marshall, indicates that the confrontation was so great that after the meeting, Lovett, the under-Secretary, called up Marshall and said "there's a great danger here that there w i l l be a Truman-Marshall r i f t which would of course destroy the cohesion of the Truman administration". What kind of a chance would the Democratic Party have of winning an election i f there was a r i f t at that high- level? Marshall was more than just a Secretary of State, he was a figure in his own right, probably could be president himself. And therefore they thought that this declaration of Jewish independence as going to be a headache. JSS And then in due course apparently.... 24 Eban It did show the President was not the President who had been elected, that's another matter. He had been the Vice-President, he was not the assertive Truman of from '48 to '52, a completely different person, saying "I've been elected, you just do what you're told". He didn't have that sort of approach. JSS But apparently then, for his part Truman never told the State Department of his conversation with Judge Rosenmann or of his intentions. Eban Obviously not, because i t doesn't figure at a l l in the May discussions. But they must have been suspicious. The fact that he recognized the state 10 minutes afterwards, i t must have been clear to Marshall that he had thought this one out before. I mean that was not a decision to be taken in 12 minutes. In other words the whole thing was l a i d on before. JSS Ambassador, before we leave this period I want to go back just a minute to the Soviet attitude which you have referred to and which was really very positive. I wonder what explanation do you have for the strong and consistent support of the Soviet Union at that time for partition and for the Jewish state, especially in light of the subsequent history? Eban You really have to look to the general foreign policy considerations of Moscow. They came out of the war t e r r i b l y worn with 20,000,000 dead, and suspicious that 25 everybody who could invade the Soviet Union would do so. The central aim of their foreign policy was to get r i d of the bases which surrounded them. It sounds absurd when you look at a map, but they had a fear of encirclement. Western bases then meant British bases, and would for several years. The British had Palestine, the British were in the Canal Zone, in the airport in Iraq. Even when the Arabs claimed freedom they had no objection to having B r i t i s h bases. These kings, they would sign up with the British, i t was a tradition. In North Africa i t was French and i t was the Soviet objective to shake them away, push them away. It explains their aggressive policy towards Turkey and Greece. The people more l i k e l y to get the Bri t i s h to move out - the Arabs - were being h i t on the head very hard by the British for revolting against Britain. But in the end they would settle for a base. I think the Soviets understood in point of fact that at that time the people who were saying "get out" to the British were the Israelis and that's the only reason for the Soviet policy. JSS So i t was a strategic concern. Eban Yes, a very important strategic concern which persisted for two or three years. In the early 1950's they no longer had that concern. The Israelis had done their job of getting the Bri t i s h out: now the Soviet policy was to win the Arabs over in their cold war against the United 26 States. During that period one must stress how right they were. They were more constant in their assertiveness i n support of Israel than even the United States. There were no wobblings, no vacillations. And in the end without the Soviet Union this generation couldn't have made i t because without their five votes, and without their Czech arms, we couldn't have made i t either diplomatically or m i l i t a r i l y . JSS Do you think that Ambassador Gromyko had very much influence in this policy or was i t s t r i c t l y as you say strategic, determined probably by Stalin himself? Eban I've just read the memoirs of Gromyko. He was the servant of policy and did not presume to i n i t i a t e i t . Once he was told that was the policy, he played i t very strongly and boldly and embraced us. Sentimentally, he reminded me of this later on in Geneva in 1967. He said, "I raised my voice in the Security Council and the GA, read my speech again." He became a Zionist hero. But one must say, however uncomfortable i t i s , this came from Stalin, the clearest part of whose policy was to get r i d of this encircling grip. And while they needed to do i t - they even found an ideology - they talked about the Zionist ideology as having h i s t o r i c a l roots. JSS Even though they had opposed Zionism, and for very good hi s t o r i c a l reasons? Eban And continued to oppose Zionism in the Soviet Union. 27 They gave us no help in the exit of the Jews but supported this national struggle with a l l the terminology of a people struggling for independence. They attacked the Arabs vehemently. Then and afterwards, the Soviet Union were either for you or against you. If they were for you, they were 100%, i f they were against you, they were 100%. The United States always had a pl u r a l i t y in their objectives and tried to combine their objectives in a single policy. So they were never 100% for you, and they were never 100% against you. Nobody could completely trust them and nobody could completely despair of them. JSS But you needed them. Eban Oh yes. JSS Trygve Lie, as you mentioned, took a very strong position i n favor of the partition and in fact he appears to have been even more stunned than you on the Jewish side by the switch in the American position. He even threatened to resign at one point and I wondered, were you in direct touch with him? Eban Very much, for you see, he was our great a l l y . He said, "don't accept this major change." For him i t was a tremendous blow to the United Nations. In his book In The Cause of Peace he says this was the f i r s t attempt since the Second World War to achieve a p o l i t i c a l end by aggression. Therefore the United Nations system was 28 challenged. It was the f i r s t real action by the General Assembly. He thought that i t was making a fool of the United Nations and a fool of him personally, that i t was destroying the hope of that degree of authority that comes under the myth of prestige. It was a terrible defiance of the United Nations system by one of the founders of the organization and he became the a l l y of the Zionist lobby in working against i t . I don't know how the views of the other Secretariat people were. I thought that Robles was rather cool, the legal advisor, Stavropoulos, was somewhat hostile. JSS I was going to ask you about that Eban I suppose you've been talking with Brian Urquhart. JSS Well, Brian was not too much involved at that point. Actually the three that Lie seems to have consulted most closely at this point were Cordier and Protitch and, later, S i r Robert Jackson who was a very young man at that point and kind of a troubleshooter for Lie. Eban His chief fame was to be the husband of Barbara Ward. JSS I want to ask you one philosophical question, i f I may. In your book, you refer back to your experience at the General Assembly in Paris, I think in 1948, and you say that your legal advisor whose name was Robinson did more than anyone else to educate us a l l on the potentialities and limitations of multilateral diplomacy. And I wonder how did you assess at that point the limitations and the 29 potentialities of multilateralism and how have you changed? Eban Well i t was completely new because there had been one power that counted, Britain, although i t was recognized that the United States would have some influence. There was the permanent mandate Commission, comprised of learned and somewhat remote academic judges like Professor LaParra and Professor Hambro and others. Basically we had one central international organization, and now we had to worry about Paraguay and Iceland. It was quite a change and we had to adapt ourselves to a completely new technique and then ask "was the United Nations very important? Could i t really change for good or i l l the destiny of our history?" The chief feeling was that failure would be catastrophic, that i t would lead to the loss of what we already had in the League mandate and the Balfour Declaration. Success would open vistas. It must also be remembered that the United Nations at that time had great prestige, I would say the f i r s t 5 years were i t s florescence. People took i t very seriously. Some of i t s actions were actually implemented. We wanted the Soviets out of Iran and they got out. And the Dutch l e f t Indonesia. It had, as i t were, impressive psychological victories like the Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. There was a tremendous press corps, with much more coverage than now. 30 Hundreds of journalists. For the general debate foreign ministers would come for three weeks and not leave New York. We would see each other, conduct transactions together, l i s t e n to each other's speeches. Today the speeches of foreign ministers in the general debate pass from the ministerial l i p s into oblivion without even a temporary resting place in the New York Times. You could pick up the New York Times in 1948 and 1949, and there were two large pages with excerpts of speeches. There was a great sense of gravity, solemnity and importance, decisiveness. Now you can be here in the middle of October and not know i f there's a session on. New York society was dominated by the United Nations session. The Secretary-General would give a dinner here and the Mayor a dinner there. And you had Bevan, Acheson, Robert Schumann - a l l these luminaries. That was the United Nations that was dealing with our problem. JSS Yes. Now i f you look at the situation today i t could be suggested that there's almost a return of the situation in 1945 and that there i s a degree of agreement, a consensus among the five Permanent Members of the Security Council and this has been reflected in some effective actions by the Council or the Secretary-General in the past two years. Has this influenced your perception of the potentialities of multilateralism as reflected in the United Nations? 31 Eban Well f i r s t of a l l , the Israeli disillusionment with the United Nations i s understandable in the short term which i s not a very hi s t o r i c a l view. The United Nations f i r s t of a l l was the f i r s t outlet for the Jews from their agony. It was a pioneer in familiarizing the world with the concept of the Jewish state. On the f i r s t of September, 1947 when I went into the Palais des Nations to receive the report, I reflected that this was the f i r s t time that the words "Jewish state" had been used by an international organization. The words had not even occurred in the Zionist program. There i t was "the Jewish national home" or "the Jewish people in Palestine". The Balfour Declaration said the same thing. It really put the concept of the Jewish state on the international map - legitimizing i t . The November resolution may have been weak j u d i c i a l l y ; i t was only a recommendation. But i t was very dramatic and historic. The Zionists called i t a decision, which i t was not. The Arabs called i t a recommendation, and were on stronger ground. In fact in February 1948 there was a very important Four Power meeting which ruled that the Security Council had no obligation to take any notice of the General Assembly resolution. In general, GA resolutions have merely moral force as noted in Goodrich and Hambro. Nevertheless, the November resolution marked a turning point in the emotional and psychological 32 history of Israel. And then above everything else, Israel was admitted to the United Nations, which i s also admission to the other 30 agencies on the basis of what i s called sovereign equality. In other words our status i s equivalent to that of the United States or Soviet Union. These are services to Israel that completely transcend a l l the pinpricks of the resolutions later on. And then the peace-keeping in 1956 which gave us free passage in the Gulf of Aqaba and the a b i l i t y to put up the pipeline piecemeal over the years in the South; and resolution 242 which legitimizes to this day our presence in the t e r r i t o r i e s , subject only to the establishment of peace. The work i t ' s doing on the Golan Heights. United Nations was a great success while i t lasted. What went wrong was that i t was abandoned, as I said, very precipitously by the Secretary-General. I'm not sure that Hammarskjold would have bowed so easily as did U Thant. JSS I have a question on that Eban I don't believe Trygve Lie would have either. But anyway there i s this obscene anti-Zionist resolution which i s completely ineffective in any legal sense. It doesn't commit anybody to anything. I think i t i s really perpetuated because Israel perpetuates i t . JSS You mean that "Zionism i s a form of racism?" Eban Yes, otherwise we would agree, so much other nonsensical 33 stuff has appeared - I'm not sure i t ' s wise to make i t the anniversary of this resolution. Nobody cares about i t . I t hasn't affected anyone's relations with us. I'm rather perturbed. The idea of revoking resolutions has never occurred in an international agency. If you put i t up and f a i l I think i t ' s nonsense. JSS Mr. Ambassador, we were talking about multilateralism and i t s prospects. Eban It has had a tremendous effect. I don't think i t should be l e f t to any single power with i t s strategic emphasis to make these breakthroughs. The other point i s that once you enter the multilateral sphere you enter a world in which there i s also a certain s p i r i t , a kind of id e a l i s t i c rhetoric. There was the stupendous transition - and the United Nations inaugurated i t - from the lowest point in our Jewish history. Of course the price was and this was because the Zionist leadership had the genius to define i t s aspirations in concrete terms which were violent and they did not want to share sovereignty, to share territory. I have said on many occasions, and I would say again, that i f the Zionist movement had then said "we want 100% of the territory and to be sovereign", the number of countries that would have given support would have been zero. The world would have organized i t s e l f successfully to prevent our emergence and therefore sharing territory and sovereignty 34 with the Palestinians was bu i l t into our history. And that's why i t ' s proving so d i f f i c u l t to emerge from i t and that's why the idea of having 100% territory and sovereignty has won no victories anywhere, not even in the United States. Not one nation out of the 160 has reall y abandoned i t s pa r t i t i o n i s t approach. JSS Later I want to come back to this in questions about the Secretaries General and the role of the Secretary- General, but I'd lik e to move on now i f I could to the 1956 war. As you have pointed out in your books, Ben Gurion stated that the major objective of the Suez undertaking from the Israe l i point of view was the achievement of a peace treaty. My question i s , was this understood at the time by the British and French? Eban No, because that was not really the objective. A l l of this i s covered in several books and in Ben Gurion's memoirs where he states very r e a l i s t i c a l l y that the short term objectives were to break the blockade of the Suez Canal and the Gulf of especially Aqaba. If you have Elat, you don't care about the Canal because you have your independent link; and to give such a blow to Nasser that we would be l e f t in peace in the South. If he f e l l - well, obviously i f Nasser should f a l l , there would be no one with whom to make a peace treaty. Once we had succeeded I put up the slogan "not backwards to belligerency but forwards to peace" . Now we had an 35 opportunity here; dictatorial power has been broken; there's now a chance that even people who objected to i t I think I said that we might wish to have reached this situation with less sacrifice and tension; but having reached i t , we mustn't go back. So the idea that this was a chance to get a real settlement was then accepted by people l i k e Lester Pearson and others who wouldn't have approved of what we did. Foster Dulles became a l i t t l e b i t interested in i t later on. He became very anti-Nasserist in 1958. Therefore precipitous withdrawal was not very intelligent from the viewpoint of the United Nations. But here we encountered a Secretary- General who f e l t , on the contrary, there were two principles involved: one was that you had to respect existing j u r i d i c i a l situations. The armistice system was the existing j u r i d i c i a l system which, incidentally, the Israelis had signed onto. Secondly, i t would be a great blow i f something as unauthorized as the Anglo-French Is r a e l i attack were to be rewarded, and therefore either i t shouldn't be rewarded at a l l in the case of Britain and France or, in the case of Israel, i t should only be rewarded on that matter where Israel had a strong case. You have the memorandum of Dulles to me in February 1957 that we were right about the illegitimacy of the blockade, we were right about illegitimacy of the fedayeen raids. So Israel should only be satisfied on 36 those matters on which the right was on i t s side - on these two issues. Ben Gurion always j u s t i f i e d the action - whether this i s retrospective or not - saying " a l l I had in mind were these two things". There i s some evidence that even in advance when we met with a group called Maporen who were against going to war, he said "we are not going to keep the Sinai. We just want to get a breakthrough to the East and we want to give Nasser a kind of spanking so he really ought to leave us alone. JSS So the Canal was a very important factor? Eban The Canal, really the Straits of Tiran, much more because they provide an Isra e l i outlet and i f you have that and you also have a land connection, you don't really need the Suez Canal, 90% of which i s o i l t r a f f i c and we would be getting our o i l from Iran or from the Gulf. JSS You just mentioned your friend, Lester Pearson. A l i t t l e later Dean Acheson in describing his experiences at the United Nations said that, while he liked Lester Pearson, that there were two people in New York that gave him problems. One was Krishna Menon and the other was Lester Pearson. This was with regard to Korea. But I wondered i f you could give your perception at this point of Lester Pearson's influence at that time in the movement toward peace-keeping and the resolution of the Suez War. Eban There grew up in the United Nations system a gallery of 37 people who were fundamentally Western in their allegiance but who didn't believe that the United States had a monopoly on wisdom. There was Canada and there was Brazil. There was India which, with i t s representatives attending, could not even be described as pro-West, and the Scandinavian countries (especially Sweden and Norway) - at that time, Lange - I remember these people. It was kind of a third force within the United Nations basically oriented to the West whose members thought there could be independent i n i t i a t i v e s . It came to special expression in Britain when they joined the movement toward relations with Communist China. So the United States was not really the father of a great obedient family. Largely I think for personal reasons, countries l i k e Canada and Sweden developed an idea that the United States ought to be listened to with deference but not with d o c i l i t y . On the question of Israel, for example, Canada was really embarrassed because the two countries which came f i r s t to Canada had gone off on the Anglo-French expedition. On the other hand the j u r i d i c i a l element in the External Affairs was very much against that sort of going off on a tangent alone. But Pearson in his speech said he was quite willing to chastise where deserved but frankly this didn't mean that the status quo was right and shouldn't be disturbed and that way building something. Peace-keeping was to be the f i r s t , and that naturally was 38 a tremendous development in the United Nations system although frankly he worked very much with Bunche on that. Bunche already had his Nobel prize for the Rhodes Armistice which, incidentally, i s a very great United Nations achievement. The United Nations, after a l l , i s the author of these Rhodes agreements which have, in fact, defined the Israeli-Arab partition since they were devised. We are s t i l l l i v i n g within JSS In a very pragmatic sense Eban Yes, except that the salients on the Golan Heights and in Jerusalem have developed within the system l a i d down by the armistice agreements. Because the word "armistice" sounds modest, i t i s not always rated as one of the great achievements of the United Nations system. The fact i s that in those days, which bears out what I said before, i f a conflict had to be resolved, the natural thing was to see i f the United Nations could resolve i t . So they both deserve their Nobel prizes. They come to expression on the Is r a e l i when the United States tried on trusteeship. It, after a l l , was defeated by Western countries - Australia, New Zealand, Latin America, Canada. They didn't want a contemptuous revocation of the partition resolution. There were people l i k e Karl .... and .... (inaudible) who were in a rage about i t . Then on the Korea cease-fire, Acheson says, Pearson - I would say that Gladwyn - Jebb and others were his 39 opponents on the matter. Jebb, who conquered the microphone, used to make speeches in direct c o l l i s i o n with Acheson. Pearson really represented one sort of United Nations zealot who, without surrendering their devotion to the Western cause because they were a l l NATO partners, didn't see why the United States should have a l l the responsibility, especially as they said we, Canada and certainly Britain, certainly Sweden, we're not inhibited by the Jewish lobbyists. This was one of the rationalizations of why they should be allowed to develop positions as Europe i s doing now. JSS And from your point of view, his thinking was not as restricted by the moral principles you mentioned that was very evident in Hammarskjold's approach to the problem? Eban Exactly. The fact i s that i f the process i s leading to something negative, i t doesn't mean that the best thing to do i s put the egg back in the shell - i f i t ' s not a good egg, i t ' s not a good situation. I think they accepted the example I used to give that when there has been a f i r e , you don't reconstruct the exact proximity of the gas to the f i r e exactly as i t was before. This was my attempt to ridicule Hammarskjold's conception of reconstitution of a situation, which was not valid. Pearson was more enlightened than Hammarskjold because he was willing to join i n the castigation of what was done 40 but this didn't mean to say we shouldn't try to do better than what existed. JSS I'd l i k e to go ahead now to Dag Hammarskj old's efforts to get a status arrangement with Nasser on the presence and departure, or non-departure, of UNEF. F i r s t of a l l I want to ask i f you were familiar with the texts of the memoranda that Hammarskjold agreed to with Nasser on the status of the UNEF. Eban I don't remember being shown the documents. I do remember talks with him in which he said that we didn't need to worry, and i t ' s not true that they can just walk out any day. This was not r e a l i s t i c . But of course everything has to be l e f t a l i t t l e b i t in the a i r . He liked leaving things in the a i r - words like "assumptions", "hopes", "presumptions". In 1957 he worked up the typical compromise under which the maritime powers could get up and say they assumed that the following would happen and the Egyptians would just s i t there and say nothing. They never really committed themselves to i t . On the other hand, as time went on we went deeper and deeper into the assurance that the United Nations force can't just be taken away when there i s explosion and violence. What happened, as some feared, was that he always gave me and others the impression that would not happen. When I said in the Security Council that i t was l i k e the f i r e brigade going away at the f i r s t 41 smell of smoke or abandoning the umbrella just as i t begins to rain. I could see that U Thant was very disgruntled by that. But I could see many glances of approval around the table. Even the United States didn't much l i k e what U Thant was doing, not that you could have denied Egyptian sovereignty. The United Nations couldn't really compromise on the principle of Egyptian sovereignty; but i t could have compromised on the pragmatics of how you reacted. It could have said "let's wait a minute. If the United Nations's going to go out, we'd just l i k e to know what's going to happen." JSS One of the questions though that did repeatedly arise was whether U Thant should have taken the matter to the General Assembly, and i t has been expressed that was the anticipation of Dag Hammarskjold. I think in your autobiography you have quoted the memorandum that was published after Hammarskjold's death which I think you interpret as meaning that this was Hammarskjold's belief and intention. Eban I s t i l l have the feeling that he would not just have.... think U Thant just lost his nerve, or perhaps as a Third World leader he was more sensitive to t e r r i t o r i a l sovereignty of the members. I think that both Lie and Hammarskjold said, "Oh I agree to accept the principle the United Nations has to move out but you have to give us time to find out what w i l l succeed the condition. 42 Since the Egyptians needed their territory back, they would have compromised in a way that later on they accepted. Even now in the peace treaty they have accepted the massive demilitarization of the area. I think that he gave up much too easily. JSS So what you're thinking i s that i f the matter had in some way been referred to the General Assembly this would have at least given a delaying time. Eban Yes. I have always found the Security Council a more rational body. I don't know what would have happened in the Assembly at that time. I think they might have appointed a committee to negotiate with the Egyptians the conditions for withdrawal - not with 150, but with 8 or 10, or they might have asked the Security Council. I think there should have been a negotiating process, not just an order - not just say O.K, we are asked to leave, we w i l l leave. Of course I know his rationale was that he didn't have a choice. Some of them were going anyway, Yugoslavia and India were going whether he said so or not. Recently in the peace-keeping machinery sometimes countries have walked out because they're tired. In one case Canada got out and Ireland came in. That's rationalization. The other rationalization was that Nasser was in a very angry mood and he would have thrown the United Nations out anyhow, physically. I wonder i f he would have done that when he was trying to get 43 sympathy for himself. If he had started k i l l i n g -I don't know who - Norwegians? In the end though from the perspective of Israel, you feel that this decision and the withdrawal of the United Nations had an adverse impact in terms of Israel's interests? Yes. F i r s t of a l l i t certainly committed us to a war that was very bad. What I have said in the 1967 speech i s true. I t undermined our interests and created the dangers that we would not otherwise have faced. It put our national security in the gravest possible p e r i l . And the United Nations - the idea that you could create a vacuum l i k e that - i s irresponsible. Internationally, and certainly in terms of Israel i t had the psychological effect of creating skepticism in Israel about the United Nations (inaudible). I think i t undermined the importance of the United Nations in the world as such because there was a certain s t a b i l i t y and because the United Nations was the custodian of that, and the United Nations abandoned i t s trust. One specific question I wanted to ask you. In 1957 Dag Hammarskjold established a study group which included Anatoly Dobrynin to examine and draw conclusions from the UNEF experience. Did you have contact with Dobrynin when he was in the Secretariat? Who appointed the study group? JSS Hammarskjold. Eban Hammarskj old? JSS And the report has been published. It points to the weaknesses as well as the strengths. Hammarskjold wanted to play down somewhat any euphoria about what peace? keeping operations could do. Eban And this i s before the fiasco of U Thant? JSS Yes, this was.... Eban I wonder why he had reason to look at i t then? JSS Well, Brian Urguhart has talked about i t on tape actually. It's not in his book, but he gives that as the reason why Hammarskjold established this group. In any event, you personally, i f you were doing an assessment of the UNEF experience, how would you come out with i t ? Eban The UNEF experience was a success story. The fact i s that i t enabled Israel to create a new dimension in international communications. It sounds fantastic i f I say we became a two-ocean country. It's at the root of our success in Africa and Asia in creating that great network of development agreements, of access, i t gave us independence in our o i l t r a f f i c , i t made Elat a center of o i l t r a f f i c which I think i t s t i l l i s , in spite of what's happened in Iran. It was very viable and that's why i t ' s tragic that i t was brought to an end. It could have created a new belief in the United Nations as a stab i l i z i n g influence in international p o l i t i c s . There 45 was not a single shot fired in anger in Gaza, although the Egyptian administration came back. The Eqyptian army didn't come back. JSS So you would conclude that this was a very persuasive i l l u s t r a t i o n of what a peace-keeping operation can do, a multilateral operation? Eban Except that i t s effects were diminished by the skepticism about i t s durability. JSS In bringing i t up-to-date, how do you assess that in terms of the present world situation? There are increasing demands now, a c a l l for peace-keeping operations of a different type. Eban I'd say in general that theoretically ( I'm going to have a talk with P6rez de Cuellar in connection with my book) the present context, i f glasnost, i s not going to be k i l l e d by Lithuania ( i t ' s quite a setback) - i f glasnost and perestroika stay alive, that's a situation in which an international organization ought to come back into i t s own. It seems to be the real arena in which the new s p i r i t can be expressed of planetary concern. The functional organizations ought to have much more freedom. The Secretary General ought to become a much more important figure. I don't know how he sees that but in theory we ought to be going back to the era of the f i r s t five years in which the United Nations was really the central arena for international diplomacy. Also this 46 fact: I think the American administration i s less un i l a t e r a l i s t than i t was in Reagan's time and Bush also has a United Nations background. I haven't seen i t developing, perhaps i t ' s too early because the Assembly w i l l only start meeting again for the f i r s t time since perestroika in September. I don't know i f the Sec Gen i s thinking of how to put a stake for the United Nations into this new situation. JSS Well, I can t e l l you that he very much i s . Would you give your thoughts on this particular change because between the f i r s t five years and now, the nature of conflict has altered. There are not many wars l e f t that are between states, between national armies. They tend to stem now from societal roots and that raises a question. You were mentioning just now the functional organizations, the greater freedom and so forth. Do you see the United Nations or multilateral organizations in general having the capacity to deal with this type of conflict which i s l i k e l y to characterize the world? Eban Here we come across one of the paradoxes of the foreign aid situation. The preference of the donor powers i f they give this money away, and especially i f they have to persuade their parliaments, i s to give i t away under their own flag. That's why I said in my "New Diplomacy" the tendency in the United states i s to want to wrap i t s own flag around i t s e l f where i t i s active, and therefore 47 the disproportion between what i t ' s prepared to do in i t s b i l a t e r a l programs and the relatively small amount i t i s prepared to devote of i t s foreign aid to international agencies. I don't know whether that w i l l change or not. What makes me a l i t t l e pessimistic i s , as I've said, that monies come not from governments but from parliaments, and parliaments tend to be proprietary. They go to Nigeria and see that the United States has b u i l t some great system of irrigation. They want the stars and stripes on i t . They don't want the blue flag. Whether an American administration could be disinterested enough to allow the international agencies to take responsibility? If i t should? No. One reason that recipient countries are more congenial to accept aid from an international agency than from a foreign power i s because then i t ' s free from any suggestion of domination - of "Washington runs you", etc. An international agency can't dominate you. One reason why the I s r a e l i programs were successful was that recipient powers knew they could throw us out on five minutes notice. They weren't sure at a l l i f aid was coming from the Soviet Union or China. They didn't want this Yankee imperialism, especially in Latin America. So i t would be intelligent for the United States [to use multilateral agencies]. This really meant that the glasnost thing has to take hold and come to expression in the United Nations and i t depends 48 on what w i l l happen in the f a l l . That's why I'm very perturbed that in the f a l l they may only be discussing how to get the Soviets out of Lithuania, or how to get the Lithuanians to be less impatient. It's a tragic thing, i t ' s emotional. I saw i t yesterday on television. It's a question whether the summit w i l l be torpedoed as was the case with the Eisenhower-Kruschchev summit. JSS If the United Nations were to be able to play a more decisive role in bringing assistance in order to head off the type of conflict that stems from social and economic causes, i t would require a greater coordination by the United Nations, I think, of the functional agencies. Based on your experience, which was, of course, not so directly related to ECOSOC, do you have any feeling that the United Nations i s capable of doing that? Eban ECOSOC has been rather weak since each agency has become rather l i k e the Roman governors, with independent Much more depends on who are the directors-general. There i s the misfortune that UNESCO degenerates under this African gentleman. You might have to have an African president when there isn't one available, but i t ' s got to be an African. I don't see any escape from that. To take the most powerful of them - the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, they're pretty independent organizations. I would say even their dependence on the Secretary-General was rather weak. He doesn't interfere 49 much. There's never really been a Secretary-General who saw the functional agencies as his main terrain. They are a l l captivated by the conflictual diplomatic conditions. Well this i s an area where he has no power. Yes. In other words their link i s very weak. It's a very loose federation of agencies. I think that whoever i s the Director General of UNESCO counts for more than anything in the center. Mr. Ambassador, to go ahead again to a rather broad question. In your positions, you were able from the beginning to work with and observe four American presidents very closely, a l l of whom were directly involved in the Middle Eastern situations, and in the United Nations' role in the Middle East. I wondered i f you could give your perception, not of the presidents as individuals, but of their attitudes toward working with the United Nations, through the United Nations, in terms of the Middle Eastern situation. It has followed a curve. It was highest in the early days and then i t declined. Truman's attitude toward the United Nations was very respectful, Eisenhower's was almost deferential. I used to say that in Eisenhower's theology, between the President of the United States and God, there was an intermediate level, the Secretary- General of the United Nations. Remember Foster Dulles' 50 speech about Suez and how he said more or less that our devotion to the United Nations transcends our devotion to our a l l i e s and our strategic interests? I think i t ' s the only occasion when you could prove that a major power gave the United Nations predominance over i t s own egotistic interests. Although we didn't like i t at the time, there was a degree of s e l f - s a c r i f i c e because frankly, strategically they ought to have supported the Br i t i s h and French. People like Acheson said, "what the h e l l are you doing?" Kissinger says i t to this day. If he had been around he would have supported the British and French, or at least prevented them from being humiliated because the humiliation of Britain and France injured American interests. It created a bi-polar world. Suez created a bi-polar world instead of a diverse world. Then you come on later in the scene and Johnson became very disillusioned by his experience in 1967. He said to me, "I w i l l go through the motions of going to the UN but I would be strongly surprised i f they do anything". And his reference was to U Thant who was a pain in the neck to him. Goldberg also began to regret that he hadn't stayed in the Supreme Court. He had the idea that in that job he was going to have a preponderant role in American foreign policy. He found, as Stevenson found out, that that isn't true. It's not true, f i r s t of a l l , because of physical absence. You're not in 51 Washington. The fact that you're a member of the Cabinet and the Security Council doesn't count very much. I see now the United States has expressed that in the appointment of a career officer, no longer these pundits l i k e Cabot Lodge, Stevenson, Moynihan, and Kirkpatrick. Johnson became really i r r i t a t e d by the attitude in 1967 and Nixon developed the idea of great power p o l i t i c s , of a Council of Europe. The direct American-Soviet line - that was the important thing. There was no disposition to, say, l e t the United Nations take something over. Carter should have had the disposition but in the end he found i f there was a massive and important conflict to be resolved, i t had to be resolved outside the United Nations system. Moreover, the United Nations had spoiled i t s credentials with Israel. That's why Camp David had to be done as an American (inaudible). The Geneva Conference was an opportunity but Kissinger was so apathetic about international organizations that he stole the UN flag, hijacked i t , and went off on his own and came back only for the signature. JSS If I r e c a l l correctly that's the only time the Secretary- General was present, opening the meeting. Eban That was arranged at the beginning, incidentally, because Israel was worried and Kissinger couldn't get us to go there u n t i l he gave a letter saying the Secretary-General would simply set the b a l l r o l l i n g . Actually in 52 Kissinger's time he also got Waldheim to accept that role i n the Indo-China Conference. The Secretary-General became l i k e a monarch, breaking the bottles to launch a ship, but after that the ship goes over to somebody else. JSS Why did Israel have any reservations about the Secretary- General? Eban Because in the United Nations we had this b u i l t - i n majority against us and therefore the less answerable to the UN, the better for us. There was even some problem (I thought i t was a great success) when we got Golda [Meir] to agree to the Soviet chairmanship of the Conference. Later on Perez t r i e d to revive i t by accepting the idea of the five permanent members inaugurating the Conference. Even then the United states was very dubious about i t because the Soviet Union would be involved. I don't know what they say now. Peres said yes because i f you had that arrangement, Israel would be the predominant military power and the United States would be the predominant p o l i t i c a l power. Nothing could happen that America and Israel didn't want to happen. JSS There was the brief period at the beginning of the Carter administration when there was a successful consultation between the United States and the Soviet Union. Eban Yes, i n October. Yes, but even then you couldn't c a l l that a United Nations framework. Carter believe, and he believes now ,1 believe, we w i l l have to come back 53 to that and that i t i s much more logical now that the Soviet Union has a much less acrimonious relationship with Israel. JSS This gets away from the United Nations but just to divert, there i s the theory that this move by Carter to reach an understanding with the Soviets was one of the things that prompted Sadat to make a move toward Israel. Do you agree with that? Eban Oh yes, because he was much more fanatic about the Soviet Union than we were. He had broken relations with the Soviet Union. That was his enemy. So i f they are going to the Soviet Union, then we go to Israel instead of the Soviet Union. And, in fact, he dictated that there should be a unilateral American mediation. He accepted Carter very well, as America, as the United States, but not the Soviet Union tagging along. In the disengagement agreements with Egypt in 1974, both Kissinger and I would have accepted the idea of signing that in Geneva, or rather of conducting the discussions in Geneva. I think in the end we did sign the agreement in Geneva. JSS It was signed in Geneva. But you mean the disengagement on the military front at kilometer 1 where there was a United Nations presence. Eban Yes, but very muted. The military signature was in Geneva. The fact i s that by actions, chiefly I must say, by the GA rather than by Security Council action; the 54 Security Council has always been more central. In fact I would say, the Arabs would say, i t has gone the other way because the United States would veto anything to which any I s r a e l i objected. If Sharon were to say we have to capture Damascus, the United States would veto a resolution expressing criticism. I'm not sure i t ' s very good for us. The United States i s passionately against these settlements, both nationally and Bush personally. They won't allow the Security Council to act and the reason they give i s , not that they're against these resolutions which the other 14 accept. They're for i t but they don't want to give the Security Council the idea that i t ' s back i n business. Here I see they have a point. If you allow the Council to make one condemnation, then every three weeks i t w i l l condemn some action of Israel. JSS You think that's the stronger influence than the consideration of the American Jewish community? Eban I think that's part of i t . When they have l e t things pass, nothing te r r i b l e has happened. They did abstain on something to do with the settlements. In general, of course, they say quite correctly, " i t ' s the Arabs' fault". They [the Arabs] formulate their texts in such a way that there's no balance and they're rather stupid in not allowing some third party to formulate texts in a way that isn't pro-Arab - some of the Europeans. It's 55 always a resolution which i s f u l l of anti-Israeli rhetoric. Then the American representative says, "we agree that Israel shouldn't have done this, etcetera, etcetera, but we can't vote for the text. It's not balanced. I t only condemns violence that emanates from Israel, and not violence which, either before or after, emanates from them. The PLO i s becoming a l i t t l e more sophisticated. Once they start getting Sweden or somebody else, or even Britain for that matter, to formulate a resolution, they might get i t through. JSS Another 242. Mr. Ambassador, going now from presidents to Secretaries-General. You have recorded your impressions pretty well in the book of the work of the f i r s t Secretaries-General. You didn't get around to Mr. Waldheim, I don't believe. Eban One i s a personal reason. I never served with him really. I t was a period when my work was in the parliamentary thing and not so much the executive branch. Also I once said of him, and I'm afraid he got to hear i t , that his career refutes the theory that nature abhors a vacuum. On the other hand, my friends who worked with him said that Israel had no cause for complaint, l i k e Chaim Herzog. I think he was very helpful with the Soviet Union. He came to Israel and he had a l i t t l e mishap. I gave him lunch or dinner and he said how nice i t i s to be here in this capital of Israel and the Israel 56 television celebrated i t too early so we more or less revoked i t by changing i t to the spi r i t u a l capital of the world. Whatever has arisen around him since then had no expression whatever during his Secretary-Generalship. In a way we are rather grateful because President Herzog has been against this witch hunt, as he ca l l s i t . Also my own feeling i s that a l l one can say i s that he was a Wehrmacht office r . 57 NAME INDEX Acheson> Dean 1, 8, 30, 36, 38, 39, 50 Alon, Amos 12 Ben-Gurion, David 7, 11, 12, 14, 34, 36 Bevan, Aneurin 2, 30 Bevin, Ernest 10 Blom, Nicolaas S. 5 Bunche, Ralph 1, 5, 6 , 9, 38 Carter, Jimmy 51--53 Churchill, Winston 2, 8 , 9, 18 Cl i f f o r d , Clark 21, 22 Cordier, Andrew 28 Dulles, John Foster 35, 49 Fabrega, Jose Isaac 6 Forrestal, James 22 Garcia, Robles 1 Goldberg, Arthur 50 Graham, Frank 4 Granados, FNU 6 Gromyko, Andrei 8, 11, 26 Hambro, Carl J. 29, 31 Hammarskj old, Dag 4, 5, 17, 32, 39-41, 43, 44 Herzl, Theodore 12 Herzog, Chaim 55' -56 Herzog, General 14 Hoo, Victor 5 58 Hood, J.D.L. Horowitz, David Hussein, Jamal Hussein, King Jackson, Robert (Sir) Jarring, Gunner V. Jebb, Gladwyn Kirkpatrick, Jeane Kissinger, Henry Lange, Halvard M. LaParra, E. de Lie, Trygvie Lodge, Henry Cabot Lovett, Robert A. Marshall, George C. Masaryk, Jan Meir, Golda Menon, Krishna Montgomery, General Morrison, Herbert Moynihan, Daniel Patrick Nasser, Gamal Abdel Nixon, Richard Pearson, Lester Peres, Shimon Perez de Cuellar, Javier 5 9 7 14, 15 28 4 38, 39 51 50-53 37 29 5, 16-18, 27, 28, 32, 41 51 23 21-24 6 52 36 22 8 51 15, 34, 36, 40, 42 51 35-39 52 45, 52 59 Protitch, Dragoslav Rand, Ivan C. Rosenmann, Samuel I. Sadat, Anwar Salazar, Joaquin E. Sandstrom, A.E.F. Schiff, Zeer Sharon, A r i e l Stavropoulos, Constantin Stevenson, Adlai Thant, u Truman, Harry S. Waldheim, Kurt Ward, Barbara weizmann, Chaim 28 5, 6 23, 24 53 6 5, 6 13 54 5, 28 50, 51 5, 32, 41, 44, 50 18, 20-24, 49 52, 55 28 10-12, 14, 22, 23 60 UNITED NATIONS ORAL HISTORY PROJECT ORAL HISTORY AGREEMENT (Interviewee) hereby agree to participate in the United Nations Oral History Project, sponsored by the Yale University Institution for Social and Policy Studies, and consent to the recording by magnetic audio tape of -fan^. interviewXej with i^ffiVy?