“That thing we call the UN”.
On September 10, 1960, General de Gaulle uttered the derogatory statement above that has gone down in history books. The general refused, at the time, to finance the Blue Helmets expedition to the Congo. And above all, he could not stand to see the United Nations and its then Secretary General, Dag Hammarskjöld, interfering in the Algerian question. “Mr. H,” as he was called to avoid the difficult pronunciation of his Swedish surname, then sided with Nasser during the Suez crisis.
