Word: spaak
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...about some new Atlantic alliance that could serve as a counterweight. Charles de Gaulle dismisses the U.N. as "ce machin" (that thingumabob). France has stubbornly refused to contribute any support to the Congo operation. Britain has never felt the same about the U.N. since Suez. Last week Paul-Henri Spaak, who was the first president of the U.N. Assembly in 1946, declared himself "disillusioned" by the way the U.N. was trending-as well he might, being Belgian. "The Assembly now wants to use force to solve . . . problems of a domestic nature," Spaak complained, and with "a passionate group" dominating...
...Socialists, aware that their bitter strike had lost them face with Belgium's basically conservative shopkeepers and housewives, pinned their hopes on Paul-Henri Spaak, who resigned his post as NATO Secretary-General to return to Belgian politics. Last week he picked up a Medal of Freedom in Washington from President Kennedy and rushed into the fray. His broad face loomed from Socialist posters all over Belgium, and party workers declared that as a moderate, and a notable orator, he was just the man to counteract the alarm produced in staid Belgian voters by rabble-rousing André Renard...
Since coming to NATO in 1957 as successor to Britain's Lord Ismay, Spaak has kept aloof from Belgian politics, is not tainted by any association either with last summer's Congo crisis or with the strikes, which cost Belgium an estimated $230 million and reopened the ancient quarrel between the northern Walloons and the southern Flemings. Spaak laid down one condition for his return to Belgian politics: virtually a free hand in the management of Socialist Party affairs. With no other candidate of comparable stature in sight, the Socialists reluctantly agreed. "Citizen Spaak is really very demanding...
Actually, Spaak needed little urging to leave NATO. He has long felt stymied in his efforts to extend NATO beyond what the U.S. and several other Western powers feel is its proper function as a defensive military alliance. They have blocked Spaak's efforts to mold NATO into a political and economic force capable of combating Communist infiltration in Africa and Asia, argued that NATO is not the proper organization for economic enterprise. At the NATO ministers' meeting last December, Britain's Foreign Secretary, Lord Home, vetoed a suggestion for NATO aid to underdeveloped nations, said that...
Often rebuffed, Spaak has threatened to quit several times. The call of Belgium's embattled Socialists finally gave him his out. "I expect for the immediate future a struggle that will be decisive for our country," Spaak told Belgians last week. "Are we going to continue to be bogged down in conservatism, weeping over our losses, or will we get a new deal politically, economically and socially...