Iran sanctions stalled in UN

On one of the evenings just before the Christmas feast, I was sitting with my wife and daughter in the bar end of a restaurant. Ahead of us, about six yards ahead, was a long trestle table with a white tablecloth, and on it a score or more of plates and dishes covering the vast range of things, from sardines to olives, tuna fish, anchovies, egg salad, pimentos etc, etc, that are thought necessary to survival as a first course before you start on the meal.

But, at the near end, there was a marvellous novelty. It was a huge Yule log. Now, I'm not, myself, greatly excited by the original – I mean the tree – but as a chocolate freak – I don't mean the cubes of candy but the liquid, the icing, the ice-cream – as a chocolate freak, my breath was caught by the imagination that had gone into this confection. 

It was a curving galleon of Yule log cake, about three feet long and eighteen inches high, the body of the cake done in milk chocolate icing with three encircling bands, like the brass bands on an antique wine cooler, in bitter chocolate. I gurgled at this marvel and pointed. My daughter said, 'Put your glasses on!' I did. It was a big, woven basket containing, on closer inspection, various breads. 

I mention this at the start because this is the time of the year when commentators, newspaper editorial writers, politicians and pundits, of every sort, are expected to open the window and look out on the 1980s and tell you what they see. I want to say that my long-distance vision is penetrating up to about six feet. After that, everything is the edge of the world. I can see every dimple on the golf ball as I stand to address it but, after that, it's gone. Long gone, I hope. So nobody had better expect from me dazzling insights into 1984 or much illumination beyond next Tuesday. 

Before, however, we come to that, I ought to add a comment to the despairing report I gave last time on the way food supplies were being kept from the Cambodian refugees. I mentioned a document that had been delivered into the hands of the President of the United States and one that had made him furious. What it said was that the Vietnamese and the Soviet Union were not only blocking great supplies of food and medicines that could save uncountable numbers of the Cambodian people, but were getting hold of supplies sent by foreign relief agencies, taxing them as imports, and either giving them to the Cambodian guerrillas who, they, the Russians support, or even selling them to the Vietnamese. And I went on to say that the International Red Cross, Oxfam, the United Nations Children's Fund and other conscience-stricken groups and individuals have handed to the Russians a golden opportunity to feed the sturdy guerrillas who are fighting the guerrillas of the Chinese-backed Pol Pot troops. 

Well, first the Russians said the document and its information constituted a slander and an outrage. And then we had protests and denials from several agencies busy sending food, they said they were getting lively cooperation from the Russians and if they are getting the Russians to see that food goes not only to the starving people on their side, the people under their puppet, Heng Samrin, but also to the starving people living under the rival Pol Pot regime, then I congratulate them both. 

But, on the heels of these protests and any sensible person's willingness to air them, comes a reliable report out of Singapore, that, on the initiative of Oxfam, many relief groups from Belgium, Holland, Denmark, West Germany, Switzerland, France, Italy, Eire, Canada and the United States, have signed an agreement – signed it three months ago – with the Heng Samrin government which, as you know, is backed by Vietnam and the Soviet Union. This agreement required the relief agencies to sketch out their general plan and have it approved by Heng Samrin's government and concede that that's the government they were helping. And, the third condition, to agree that, under this plan, no food or medicine would go into those parts of the country held by the Pol Pot guerrillas’ Chinese-backed regime, which, incidentally, President Carter decided to support, having agonised for an excruciating time over which to choose between two detestable tyrannies. 

You can say it another way. No food, sanctioned by this agreement, would be allowed into Cambodia across the border of Thailand, which was where masses of it had arrived. I put it simply last time by saying that the Russians, and that means the Vietnamese-backed Heng Samrin regime, weren't willing to let food go to the refugees or the guerrillas of the Chinese-backed Pol Pot regime, and it seems to me that this political agreement between a body of relief agencies and the Heng Samrin government only goes to confirm that statement. And as far as the United Nations' effort is concerned, a report from Bangkok to the Far Eastern Economic Review says that a thousand tons a day of rice, delivered by the UN, is still being held up in ports. 

I would very much like to say that there is great and good news, that the starving people of Cambodia are not, after all, being treated as political pawns but plainly they are, as the Singapore agent of Oxfam said on Thursday. Not, I imagine, in triumph, they signed the agreement with the Heng Samrin government, quote, 'because it's better to help some people than none at all'. Meanwhile, we have to suppose that all those starving people dragging along the Cambodian Thai frontier, and any others in the Pol Pot country, beg for food and get a stone. 

Before we open a window on the 1980s, let's stay with the prospect of January 1980. The calendar itself will be a daily reminder to Americans that they are now in a presidential election year and, unfortunately, it's an ever-present reminder to politicians that anything they think or say will be politically interpreted, whether they intended it so, or not. Pay particular attention to American politicians, especially in the Senate, who start speaking out boldly in a statesmanlike way in the 'public' interest, as distinct from the oil interests or the farmers' interests or the labour union's interest, or any other lobby! These men, I think you'll find, are nearly always senators who are not up for re-election in 1980. They can help the country by being free to quicken a genuine, popular grievance. They can also hamper and hurt other politicians, from the president down, who are trying to do their best but who are also going to be at the mercy of the voters in November. 

This brings up the question which European visitors, Britons especially, are most fond of asking: 'How is Jimmy Carter doing? Who will be the next president?' Well, of course, if I knew that I wouldn't tell you, I'd make a packet on a thousand bets. But, as January comes drifting or shining up on the horizon according to the climate, we can already see that President Carter has, and will have from now on, November very much in mind. 

Take, for example, a simple, annual ceremony. The president's economic message to Congress is traditionally given the day after Congress reassembles in the first week in January. Mr Carter quietly asked his Democratic leader in the Senate, Senator Byrd, if he wouldn't mind pushing the date back to the third week in January. 

Now January 1 is the day of a caucus of Democrats in Iowa and their vote is looked on as a preliminary showdown between President Carter and Senator Kennedy. Obviously, the president thought he could focus national attention on himself on the very eve of the Iowa showdown. What killed it off was Senator Byrd's curt message to the White House that the president could go ahead and appear before Congress at the later date but that he, the president's own party leader in the Senate, would not be present. He had a previous engagement. 

A small point, not much noise to abroad, but it shows that while the president, with evident sincerity, is giving most of his time to the frustrating problem of Iran, to the plight of Cambodia, and now to the Russian pressures on Afghanistan, he simply must listen to those advisers who point out the political significance of everything he does, the tactics, big and small, by which he may contrive to stay in the White House. 

The interminable business of the American hostages moved a lumbering step forward this weekend. Not, by any means, necessarily a step towards a solution but another step towards the end of the road of peaceful negotiation, which the president promised he would follow at the beginning. Presidential appeals and eloquence have been exhausted, third parties, allies, are being consulted for help every day, the thing went to the International Court at the Hague and it's voted unanimously to urge Iran to release the hostages, not that the Ayatollah Khomeini ever had any intention of recognising the court's jurisdiction. 

And now it – 'it' being a proposal to impose collective trade and economic sanctions – it goes to the Security Council of the United Nations. Just to make things tougher for Mr Carter, the council revamps its membership every first of January. There are 15 members of the council and you need nine approving votes to pass any resolution. Even if the issue is debated and passed on before New Year's Day, the prospects, as I talk, are for no more than six affirmative votes. China has quietly promised not to veto an American resolution and the Soviet Union is the other question mark here. As a permanent member, it could, of course, veto any resolution into oblivion. And, if the matter waits till the new council sits, the administration can count only one certain supporter among the new members. On the whole, the prospects for a positive United Nations' vote for sanctions seem dim. 

Well, a failure in the UN will, without doubt, further erode the patience of the American people which is beginning to wear thin. You must all have heard about the dramatic somersault in the findings of the last Gallup poll. Whereas in July Kennedy had a two to one lead over the president in his own party, at the beginning of December Mr Carter led Kennedy by 48 per cent to 40, an unprecedented switch of public opinion of 63 percentage points. And in the general poll of voters of all parties, the president beat everybody else handsomely. But, what was admired as statesmanlike restraint is now beginning to look like torpor or, at best, simple frustration. Whatever happens to Kennedy, the president’s popularity, it seems to me, is bound to wane if the weeks drag on and the Ayatollah Khomeini seems still to be in the rider's seat. 

I have just opened the window and looked out on the 1980s. I take a dim view of them but that's only because, as I said at the start, I take a dim view of everything much beyond six feet or the first week in January. 

Happy New Year!

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

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