FLUSHING MEADOWS: The UN General Assembly ... on Friday [May 18] clamped a worldwide strategic embargo on Communist China and North Korea by 47-to-nothing vote. There were eight abstentions. Russia and her four Cominform partners refused to participate … arguing that the Assembly was not empowered to recommend such an embargo and only the Security Council could legally consider the measure.

Seven of the abstaining countries were … Afghanistan, Burma, Egypt, Bharat, Indonesia, Pakistan and Syria. Sweden, was the only Western country to abstain. M. Jacob Malik, Soviet delegate, protested that the General Assembly had no right, ... to impose any embargoes. This was the sole prerogative of the Security Council. He declared that the United States was launched on the path of the “structural ruin and disintegration of the United Nations.” Responsibility for the ruin of the [UN], he said, would lie with the “aggressive nucleus” inside the organisation.

After the delegations of Ecuador, Burma, Iraq, “Israel” and the Lebanon had explained their votes, the five Soviet group countries said that they would not participate in the voting. — News agencies

Published in Dawn, May 19th, 2026