55 years ago/June 17, 1967

The fifth emergency special session of the UN General Assembly opened, with big media attention. (The four other emergency sessions (topic and year): Middle East 1956, 1958; Hungary, 1956; Congo, 1960; the next, sixth emergency special session: Afghanistan, 1980.) Many delegations were led by head of governments or Ministers of Foreign Affairs. On June 13, Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko, Minister of Foreign Affairs of USSR requested to convene an emergency special session of the UN General Assembly in a letter to UN Secretary General U Thant. The United States Ambassador to the UN Arthur Goldberg repeated that the US thought it was unnecessary to convene the emergency special session, but the Assembly adopted the agenda. According to the request of some delegations they agreed to discuss the content of Gromyko’s letter after one day break.