33

2—A 2A

the establishment of an international regime for the City of Jerusalem under United Nations administration." This amendment, when put to the vote, received 10 votes (including New Zealand) in favour, 10 against, with 28 abstentions. Since it was a tie vote a second show of hands was asked for, when those against the proposal were reinforced by four of those who had previously abstained, and the amendment was therefore lost. Still another attempt to persuade the Assembly to take some positive action with regard to Jerusalem was made after the resolution on Palestine as a whole had been adopted. The Guatemalan delegate (Mr. Granados) appealed to the Assembly to provide for the future of Jerusalem by requesting the Trusteeship Council to act on the Statute for Jerusalem. The President, however, said that it would not be possible for him to accede to this Guatemalan request because the point was not on the agenda. While the President's ruling was in the circumstances, probably not surprising, the fact remains that the Trusteeship Council's request of 21st April for further instructions regarding the draft statute had not received a direct answer from the Assembly, which had, however, plainly showed that it regarded the, statute as being " shelved " at least in the meantime. 111. CONCLUSION I am, in conclusion, painfully conscious of the fact that this report is inconsecutive and confused. It is, indeed, a confused report, but this regrettable result is due to the fact that the Assembly's discussions themselves were in the highest degree inconsecutive and confused. No one had ever held the Assembly's November decision, in favour of partition with economic union, to be a perfect solution of a problem, which, indeed, in circumstances as they existed then, was susceptible of no perfect solution. As I told the Assembly, no one could, and no one did, doubt the moral and logical cogency of many of the arguments advanced by the representatives of the Arab States in opposition to partition. But the tangled conflict of admitted rights and wrongs on both sides had been most carefully and anxiously and honestly weighed in November and the decision come to then, and affirmatively supported by no less than thirty-three members of the United Nations, was considered to be that which was open to the least objection, created less injustice than any other possible solution, and offered the best prospects of a final settlement of a most intractable problem. But from its very inception this Special Assembly allowed itself to be led astray by assumptions —quite unjustified by facts —that conditions in respect of Palestine had substantially changed since the Assembly resolution of 29th November, 1947 ; that that resolution —solely because it had been challenged and opposed by force —must be regarded as ineffective;