The Reminiscences of Zafrulla Khan — Page 236
220 REMINISCENCES OF SIR MUHAMMAD ZAFRULLA KHAN The President of that Session, feeling that the session had taken too long, had left a memorandum of his views on the steps that should be taken to pull up the procedure so that the work could be carried on with dispatch. Dispatch in itself is desirable but also the representation of member states could not be kept up at the desirable level if the session were to extend over a long period. The principal delegates have other duties also, they would go away, and leave the work in the hands of the members of the Permanent Mission. That is not a very effective way of attending to the business of the Assembly. But there were other things apart from punctuality which were needed to save time and to help concentrate on the business. Two things that I had in mind were: one) I took a little more interest in the framing of the agenda for each day's business than my predecessors might have done. I have no means of judging - perhaps they did it, too. But I began to feel from the way in which the Secretariat expected the thing to run, that perhaps not as much attention was being paid to that aspect as it deserved. I took care that once the General Debate was over, whenever a meeting of the Plenary was scheduled, and it had to be scheduled more often than not, there should be enough work to keep it occupied for the whole period of the sitting, that there should be no wasted loose ends. That also saved a lot of time. During previous Sessions, towards the end of the Session, evening sittings had become the normal course, which put a very heavy strain on delegates: to have a morning sitting from 10:30 to 1:00; then the afternoon sitting from 3:00 to 6:00 and then start the evening sitting at 8:30 and carry on until perhaps midnight. When could they have any rest or respite? When could they sit back and consider the questions that had come up or put their heads together along with their colleagues and other delegations? Having secured the fullest cooperation of the Assembly on whatever I had proposed, I thought it was due to them that I should not unduly lengthen their hours of work. Thus, I believe during the 17th Session we had the fewest evening sittings of any Session, and also not a single Saturday-morning sitting. There used to be several in previous Sessions. That gave everybody time to sit back, to study and to prepare for the next sitting. In this business, and in every other business indeed that related to the conduct of the business of the Assembly, my Chairmen of