Word: hammarskjolds
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Tears in the Lobby. When the news of Hammarskjold's missing plane clattered into Manhattan on the Telex line direct from Leopoldville, shocked secretariat officials rushed to the cable room on the U.N. skyscraper's 38th floor, hovered anxiously for hours over the machine. When the final bulletin confirmed the Secretary's death, one high-ranking officer turned to another. "I suppose we should lower the flag." he said dully. "Yes." replied the other, "perhaps we should." Below, news was already spreading from floor to floor. Pale and shaken employees gathered in groups in the corridors...
From his wood-paneled suite high above Manhattan, Hammarskjold had operated his international civil service (5,000 employees in scores of countries) with quiet efficiency. He could fix a diplomat's parking ticket with the New York police, arrange the cleaning of the 5,400 windows at U.N. headquarters, send food to famine areas, or mediate a Middle East war threat with the same dispassionate precision. But in a rare lapse, as he left for the Congo fortnight ago, Hammarskjold had failed to designate an Acting Secretary-General to run the shop in his absence...
Kiss of Death. Hardly had the news of Hammarskjold's death arrived when Ambassador Stevenson met with his delegation staff, decided on a drive to install quickly some respected U.N. figure-probably an African or Asian-as a temporary administrator. Stevenson knew that it was useless to press for a permanent new Secretary-General, who is formally appointed by the Assembly but who must first get clearance in the veto-bound Security Council. There the Russians would inevitably climb into their troika-their insistent demand that the office of Secretary-General be replaced by a three-man, veto-bound...
Behind the Eyes. Whatever emerges from this huge agenda, whatever becomes of the U.S. initiative to save the U.N., the world organization can never be the same again. That fact stems from causes far deeper than Hammarskjold's death-the very nature of the U.N. and the nature of Hammarskjold's policies...
...Before Hammarskjold, the U.N.'s big achievement had been the intervention in Korea to halt the southward thrust of Asia's Communists.* It was essentially not a U.N. action but a U.S. action with U.N. sanction; in the field, it ended with tragic indecision. When he took over three years after the Korea decision, Hammarskjold, a Swedish diplomat whose name was not only unpronounceable but virtually unknown in the rest of the world, approached his task with modest caution. Few spotted the fire behind those distant blue eyes. Then came the 1954 U.N. resolution urging the release...