QUOTE

''[At the United Nations] we have had the luxury of a breathing space, the advantage of a span of years in which our acts of commission or our frequent responses of omission were not entirely critical to the future. My dear friends, that time is behind us now.''

- Carlos P. Romulo, Nov. 23, l983, in what he termed ''my swan song'' to the United Nations, which he helped found in 1945.