UN General Assembly
1954

15. Would it not be a strange irony if the United Nations were to be left behind by this momentum of negotiated agreements, and to become the only place in which quiet negotiation was precluded by the strident echoes of public denunciation? The danger that negotiated agreements will be driven outside the United Nations, while vehement propaganda warfare prevails within it, is not an unreal danger. It is a prospect worthy of our deep preoccupation. One problem which arises is whether public debate, with all its evident advantages, should remain, in effect, the only technique available to the United Nations in its work. There is nothing in our Charter which confines us to public debate as the only authentic United Nations process. My question is whether the facilities of contact available in the United Nations are sufficiently used for bringing disputing parties together for serious bilateral negotiation. Such a role would be fully in accord with the purpose of our Organization as “a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of . . . common ends”.