Dr. Alex Bebler
On October 27, 1947, the General Assembly of the United Nations, during its second regular session, held at Lake Success, adopted a resolution presented by the United States Delegation, creating a special commission with its seat in Greece. Representatives of The United States of America, Great Britain, France, China, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Pakistan and The Netherlands were elected members of this commission, which had the ostensible function of investigating the causes of unrest in Greece and on the borders of that country, and of elaborating proposals toward conciliation and the restoration of peace in that part of the world.
This resolution was adopted over the protests of the delegations of the U.S.S.R., Ukraine, Byelorussia, Yugoslavia, Poland and Czechoslovakia. These countries made it clear that the mandate of this special commission, as set forth in the resolution, is contrary to the principles of the equality and sovereignty of nations which are recognized in the Charter of the United Nations, and that it in fact constituted an infringement of the sovereignty of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania. During the course of the Second Session the six above-mentioned delegations exposed the real aim of this move. The sending of this commission to Greece was an attempt to hide the real culprits responsible for the internal situation in Greece as well as for the troubled relations between Greece and its northern neighbors: namely, the United States of America, Great Britain and the Athens government.
For these reasons the representatives of the six above-mentioned countries declared that they would not take part in the proceedings of the commission. The same stand was later taken by Bulgaria and Albania, which also declared that their governments considered the commission non-existent and would refuse to cooperate with it.
The body so appointed, arbitrarily named itself the Special Commission of the United Nations for the Balkans, in spite of the fact that three out of four Balkan nations refused to recognize or cooperate with it. The commission proceeded to set up headquarters in Salonika.
Dr. Castillo-Najera — to whom the Yugoslav delegate Dr. Ales Bebler refers several times in the course of his speeches — was the Rapporteur of the so-called Special Commission of the United Nations for the Balkans during the discussion of the Greek question in the First Committee (Political Committee) of the Third Session of the General Assembly in Paris, in October- November, 1948.