406 Between Yesterday and Tomorrow (1914– )resisted the package deal proposal could now claim to have international
law fi rmly on their side.
Imaginative suggestions for breaking the logjam were not lacking. Th e
government of Argentina proposed that admission of an applicant state
could be eff ectuated by the General Assembly alone, even if the application
had been vetoed in the Security Council— that is, it would suffi ce that the
question of admission had merely been submitted to the Security Council
and decided upon by it, even if negatively. Another proposal, put forward by
the Peruvian government, was to regard questions of admission of new
members as procedural, rather than substantive, issues— with the result that
the veto power would not apply. Th e World Court, however, in another advi-
sory opinion, ruled these proposals out. Th e UN Charter, it pronounced,
requires an affi rmative vote by both bodies for admission. Th e impasse was
eventually broken when, notwithstanding the Court’s stricture, the package
deal solution was adopted in 1955. Exhaustion had won out over principle,
and the UN experienced a great upward jump in its membership. Th e crisis
was resolved, but largely by setting the legal considerations quietly aside.
Another attempt to enlist the aid of the World Court in Cold War dis-
putes, this time over three of the post– World War II peace treaties, was, if
anything, even more anticlimactic. Th e Western governments accused three
socialist countries (Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary) of breaching provi-
sions of their respective peace treaties that required respect for human
rights. Th e treaties contained dispute- settlement mechanisms in the form
of the establishment of arbitral panels, to which the parties to a dispute
would name representatives. Th e three governments sought to derail the
pro cess by refusing to appoint representatives— thereby preventing the for-
mation of the panels. Th e Western governments then proposed that the
secretary- general of the UN make the appointments in their place. When
the three governments objected, the General Assembly requested an advi-
sory opinion from the World Court as to whether it would be lawful to pro-
ceed with that alternative mechanism.
Th e Court’s response, handed down in an advisory opinion in 1950, was
negative. It held that the treaties set out the only obligatory means of dis-
pute settlement. If that sole procedure cannot be carried out— even if the
cause is a deliberate refusal of countries to cooperate— then an alternative
mechanism cannot be substituted. Th e General Assembly (which had a