The Executive and Liaison Committee of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) met in Berne, Switzerland, from May 16 to 23, 1960, preceded, from May 2 on, by meetings of several subcommittees, and followed, from May 23 to 28, by a session of the Enlarged Executive and Liaison Committee. The report of the activities of the Union for 1959 was approved without opposition, and the discussion was devoted chiefly to examining the reports of the various subcommittees, the recommendations of which were generally accepted, although the conclusions of the Tariffication Subcommittee concerning the weight scale and the rates applicable to each step in the scale were approved by only a small majority. The reports of the Air Mail Subcommittee and the Transit Rates Subcommittee were adopted by large majorities, and the recommendations of the Parcels Subcommittee obtained easy approval, although some of the members defended the old system of calculating rates by the kilogram. The collaboration of UPU with the UN and other agencies such as the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization and the International Atomic Energy Agency was mentioned; a report on the work of the Consultative Committee for Postal Studies (CCPS) was noted with interest; and several administrative questions concerning the organization of the International Bureau were also considered.

The Assembly of the League of Nations,

Considering that the Charter of the United Nations has created, for purposes of the same nature as those for which the League of Nations was established, an international organisation known as the United Nations to which all States may be admitted as Members on the conditions prescribed by the Charter and to which the great majority of the Members of the League already belong;

Desiring to promote, so far as lies in its power, the continuation, development and success of international co-operation in the new form adopted by the United Nations;

Considering that, since the new organisation has now commenced to exercise its functions, the League of Nations may be dissolved; and

Considering that, under Article 3, paragraph 3, of the Covenant, the Assembly may deal at its meetings with any matter within the sphere of action of the League:

A summary of its activities in 1950 was released by the Organization for European Economic Cooperation in January 1951. During the first two years of its establishment, the report stated, OEEC had been essentially an instrument for the distribution of United States aid but then became increasingly an instrument of cooperation for the solution of European economic problems. In two years, European production had been restored, trade had almost entirely recovered and international financial stability was achieved. The establishment of a European Payments Union was considered one of the main achievements of OEEC during 1950.

The fourth regular session of the General Assembly opened at Flushing Meadows, New York, on September 20, 1949. The Assembly was to consider an agenda of 68 items, including the annual reports of the three United Nations Councils, the Secretary-General, and subsidiary bodies; and special reports from commissions operating in Korea, Palestine and the Balkans. Other topics for discussion were the disposition of the Italian Colonies, Indonesia, the situation in China, atomic energy, creation of a United Nations Field Service, economic development of under-developed areas, freedom of information, Southwest Africa, information from non-self-governing territories, and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms in Bulgaria, Hungary and Rumania.

In the sixteen years since the United Nations on the invitation of the United States established its principal headquarters in New York, there have been remarkably few incidents and little publicity in connection with the immunities and privileges of Members' representatives. This is no doubt due not to the clarity or quality of the relevant juridical instruments but to the tact and understanding of all concerned: the United Nations and more particularly its Secretaries-General, the representatives of the Member States and in a very large measure the Department of State and the United States Mission to the United Nations. It was the violent reaction of Chairman N. S. Khrushchev, attending the fifteenth session of the General Assembly as head of the Soviet Union delegation, against the restrictions imposed upon his movements in the United States by the Department of State which drew attention to the question of the rights and privileges of delegations to the United Nations. For the first time the head of the delegation of a great power and a permanent member of the Security Council was subjected to such restrictions. Speaking in the General Assembly, Mr. Khrushchev referred to “the various restrictions of the rights of representatives of States in the United Nations” and the “instances … of the representatives of young African and Asian States being subjected to racial discrimination.” He raised the question “whether or not thought should be given to the choice of another location for the United Nations Headquarters which would better facilitate the effective work of this international organization.”The nature and extent of these restrictions will be discussed below but it may be well to begin with a survey and analysis of the bewildering array of instruments which govern this matter.

If the United Nations system is to outlaw the unilateral use of force, except in cases of self-defense, it is clear that some provision must be made for the peaceful settlement of disputes and for peaceful change. In the past, peacekeeping operations have often succeeded in restoring a fragile peace. Yet collective actionall too frequently has been limited to a restoration of the status quo ante. Indeed, states have usuallyfailed to accept any collective responsibility to deal with the grievances that initially led to the outbreak of hostilities. If peace is to be maintained over any extended period of time, peacekeeping operations must not, asAmbassador Arthur J. Goldberg recently warned, “be a sofa to provide a comfortable respite from efforts atpeaceful settlement” but instead should “be a springboard for accelerated efforts to eliminate the root causes of conflict.”

The ninth session of the International Telecommunication Union Administrative Council was held in Geneva from May 1 to 20, 1954, under the chairmanship of Charles J. Acton (Canada). It was reported that the Council had kept the ITU budget within the limits set at the Buenos Aires Conference, although it had not been easy to strike a balance between the desire of the staff to improve its lot and the desire of ITU members to cut their financial burden as far as possible. In the interests of economy, the Council decided to postpone consideration of the proposed convening of the Telegraph and Telephone Conference until the Council's tenth session; it would, therefore, be impossible for the Conference to meet before 1956. The Council also reported that it was impossible to foresee when the Radio Conference could be convened; the question was to be reviewed by the Council in 1955. The question of postponing the next Plenipotentiary Conference of ITU, which would normally meet in 1957, for one or two years was discussed during the Council's ninth session; further discussion was scheduled for the tenth session.

In the short span of a year, from the Messina Conference held on June 1 and 2, 1955, by the foreign ministers of Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, to the series of meetings begun in Brussels on June 26, 1956, among the same governments, the idea of economic unification of these six countries has made a striking advance toward its realization. The heads of the delegations to the Intergovernmental Committee established by the Messina Conference produced a report in which they jointly and unanimously proposed to start drafting a treaty (or two treaties) to establish a “common market” and an atomic community (Euratom) along the lines of their report. The governments are not yet formally committed to accept all the recommendations of this report; but they agreed at the Venice Conference on May 29, 1956, to take it as a basis for the negotiation of the treaty. This document is therefore to be regarded as much more than another expert opinion on the desirability or the feasibility of economic integration. It outlines the detailed objectives to be reached and contains a relatively precise timetable hammered out through months of arduous discussions which took the better part of the summer and of the fall of 1955 in the Belgian capital. Euratom and the “common market” are of course closely interrelated political issues. Technically, however, they are quite distinct and only the common market is examined in this paper.

With this issue, the editorial offices of International Organization (IO) move from the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University in the United States to the Munk Center for International Studies at the University of Toronto in Canada. For the past five years, Lisa Martin has done an outstanding job in leading the journal to its current top-ranked position in the field. As editor-in-chief, Lisa was assisted not only by Rebecca Webb, an excellent managing editor, but also by two superb associate editors, Thomas Risse from the Free University in Berlin and Beth Yarbrough from Amherst College. We are grateful to them all for their hard work and dedication.

Please substitute the following for the definition on page 276 of our article in the Spring 1996 issue of International Organization (Volume 50, No. 2, pp.269–99):

Definition. A coalition of m (out of n) members is nonconnected if there is a member i ε {N} – {M} that belongs in the Pareto set of {M}.

A regular meeting of the Political Consultative Committee of the member states of the Warsaw Pact was held in Moscow on March 28 and 29, 1961, according to press reports. Heads of government and military and political leaders of the eight member states were present, although there was considerable comment in the press when Albania sent Deputy Premier Begir Balluku instead of General Enver Hoxha, First Secretary of the Albanian Communist Party. Communist China sent as an observer Liu Hsiao, Ambassador to Moscow. The Council on Mutual Economic Aid of the pact reportedly disclosed a new economic plan at the conference that called for the voluntary coordination of member nations' economic schemes and prospects for a twentyyear period through 1980. The project was to constitute a new form of international cooperation that would be the prototype for the economic relations of the future communist society. The Warsaw Pact nations also reportedly discussed military matters, including the situation in Germany.

The General Council of the International Refugee Organization held its eighth session October 23 to 27, 1951 at Geneva. The Council reviewed the annual report of the Director-General for the period July 1, 1950 to June 30, 1951 in which Mr. Kingsley summarized the activities and achievements of IRO since its inception, defined the migration trends for the previous year, and discussed methods being employed to transfer IRO functions to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the Allied High Commission for Germany, and to voluntary groups and local authorities. In a supplementary report on residual problems Mr. Kingsley emphasized the serious refugee problems in Greece, Trieste, Austria, Italy, China, and Korea which would survive the organization's closure early in 1952 despite the substantial completion of IRO activities by that time. He reported that 573 ‘institutional hard core’ cases were being resettled and 1,514 locally resettled but pointed out a lack in satisfactory arrangement for 477 hard core cases in Shanghai, Samar, Greece, and Spain, while particularly emphasizing the need to make intensive efforts to resettle the 398 cases in Shanghai and 900 additional cases in Trieste. Although the Council agreed to delay its communication on residual problems to the United Nations until its next session pending further information on Trieste and Shanghai, it approved a decision first to assist the 477 hard core cases, then to apportion expenditures equally between material assistance and resettlement. At the close of this report on residual problems Mr. Kingsley announced the favorable outcome of the shipping program and satisfactory arrangements with the ‘institutional hard core’, permitting resettlement of 9,000 additional refugees before closure.

The European Parliament met in Strasbourg on February 5–6, 1963. The session opened with a statement by Mr. Robert Marjolin, French vice-president of the European Economic Community (EEC) Commission, on the economic situation of the Community. Provided that there was no slump in any important country outside the Six, Mr. Marjolin said that satisfactory economic growth was to be expected within the Community during 1963. He forecast that the rising costs of consumer goods would slacken then level off in the present year.

During September and October 1958 the Permanent Council of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) discussed the question of Cyprus. On September 24, the Council heard M. Paul-Henri Spaak, Secretary-General of NATO, describe his visit on September 23 to Athens, where he had discussed problems connected with Cyprus with the Greek Prime Minister. His consultation had centered on a United Kingdom plan whereby there would be a seven-year partnership in Cyprus to provide a quiet atmosphere and proper conditions under which to work out a final solution; the plan had received the support of the Turks but not of the Greeks. M. Spaak proposed to the Council the calling of a conference in which the Greek, Turkish, and United Kingdom governments and representatives of the Greek Cypriot and Tyrkish Cypriot communities would take part.

The International Bureau of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) was notified in Demember 1962 that, due to the Chinese invasion and the consequent national emergency, India could not host the fifteenth Universal Postal Congress which had been scheduled to open on March 1, 1963, in New Delhi. On January 17, 1963, the Director of the International Bureau, Mr. Weber, received from the Austrian government an official invitation to hold the fifteenth Congress in Vienna in June 1964.