ABSTRACT
On May 17, the Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) consulted the representatives of the countries providing units for the international force. The representatives of India and Yugoslavia upheld the Egyptian thesis. The representative of Canada took a different position. In New York, the countries most directly implicated, India and Yugoslavia, because of their links with the United Arab Republic, pressed the Secretary-General to give the order for the evacuation. The Council would inevitably have been paralysed by the disagreement between the Great Powers, with the Soviet Union arguing for the Egyptian cause, which could hardly be contested from the legal point of view. President Johnson was afraid all else of a second Vietnam. In theory, he could and should have reminded President Nasser of the solemn commitments contracted by the United States government in 1957, at the time when Israeli troops evacuated Sharm-el-Sheik.
