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In a February 1959 speech, Nikita Khrushchev indicated that the United Nations should play a role in the Berlin situation, that Western troops should be withdrawn from West Berlin, and that an agreement should be reached making West Berlin a demilitarized city. In response to the ensuing debate over the issue, Dag Hammarskjöld made a speech in Copenhagen: "Do We Need the United Nations ?". This speech, delivered to the Students' Association on May 2, 1959, presented the values and limitations of the United Nations. Dag Hammarskjöld concluded his statement as follows:
 

"We need the Organization... for the negotiating possibilities it opens up. We need it as an executive organ. We need it for the constructive additions it offers in international attempts to resolve conflicts of interest. And we need it as a foundation and a framework for arduous and time-consuming attempts to find forms in which an extranational - or perhaps even supranational - influence may be brought to bear in the prevention of future conflicts. In none of these respects do any of the other forms of international organization which have been tested offer a viable alternative. Therefore, the work must go on.  To write it off because of difficulties or failures would mean, among many other things, to write off our hope of developing methods for international coexistence which offer a better chance than the traditional ones for truth, justice, and good sense to prevail.

A summit meeting in Geneva ended on August 20 without an agreement being reached on the Berlin situation.

In March, Dag Hammarskjöld visited Nepal and took his famous photographs of Everest, Annapurna and other Himalayan peaks from an airplane. These photographs accompanied an article which he wrote for the National Geographic: "A New Look at Everest". This article was not published until January 1961.

After Guinea became independent and broke with the French Union, it lost French technical and economic assistance. Dag Hammarskjöld consulted and discussed with President Sekou Touré and the newly formed government, and with the specialized agencies, the cooperation and assistance that would be provided to Guinea by the United Nations. A special representative was appointed to plan for the activities of the Ãå±±½ûµØfamily in Guinea. It was an unprecedented practical move to assist cooperation between a new African country, the Ãå±±½ûµØfamily and donor Governments 

In the introduction to his Annual Report to the General Assembly, submitted on August 20, 1959, the Secretary-General devoted a large part to a careful survey of United Nations procedures and practices, including the special diplomatic and operational functions entrusted to him by the legislative organs, as well as to the "good-offices" role he was called upon to play on an increasingly regular basis: 
 

"In some recent cases of international conflict or other difficulties involving member states the Secretary-General has dispatched personal representatives with the task of assisting the governments in their efforts. This may be regarded as a further development of actions of a "good-offices" nature, with which the Secretary-General is now frequently charged.  The steps to which I refer here have been taken with the consent or at the invitation of the governement concerned, but without formal decisions of other organs of the United Nations. Such actions by the Secretary-General fall within the competence of his office and are, in my view, in other respects also in strict accordance with the Charter, when they serve its purpose. As a matter of course, the members of the appropriate organ of the United Nations have been informed about the action planned by the Secretary-General and were given an opportunity to express views on it... The main significance of the evolution of the Office of the Secretary-General... lies in the fact that it has provided for smooth and fast action, which might otherwise not have been open to the Organization."   (A/4132)

The mandate of the was due to expire on June 30, 1960. At the 1958 General Asssemby, the United States, as principal contributor to UNRWA's budget, had urged that, instead of just renewing UNRWA's mandate, a system be sought that would accelerate the rate at which refugees would become self-supporting. After a lengthty debate on the issue, the Secretary-General was asked to look into UNRWA's operations and its mandate and to make appropriate proposals. Dag Hammarskjöld submitted his report (A/4121) on June 15, 1959 and recommended to the Assembly the continuation and improvement of UNRWA. He  stated that he was basing his: 
 

"recommendation on an analysis of the three predominant factors of the refugee problem - the psychological, political and economic."

Beginning with a consideration of the economic aspects, the Secretary-General said that the reintegration of the Palestine refugees into the productive life of the Near East presented problems similar to those faced in all cases of reintegration into economic life of a largely unemployed population. 

The process would, for the immediate future at least, require capital imports sufficient to render possible an increase in national income and capital formation preferably more than proportional, but at least proportional to the increase in population. In the long run, with increasing revenues from oil in some parts of the region, the emphasis would switch from capital imports to investment of surpluses in the areas where reintegration took place. 

The capital formation would, to a large extent, have to take the form of agricultural and industrial investments. The unemployed population represented by the Palestinian refugees should be regarded as an asset for the future; it was a reservoir of manpower which in the desirable general economic development would assist in the creation of higher standards for the whole population of the area. 

The Secretary-General pointed out that the economic development, necessary to an integration of the refugees, required that various political difficulties hampering progress in the desirable direction should be overcome. One of them was the Palestine problem in its various aspects; another was the problem of inter-Arab relationships; a third was the problem of an Arab economic cooperation so framed as to make possible the exploitation of the natural resources of the area to the full benefit of all the countries in the area. 

Regarding the Palestine problem, no progress towards a solution was in view. A solution, however, should have been sought in order to create conditions for a sound general economic development in the area, irrespective of its significance for the reintegration of the refugees. If the problem were solved sufficiently well to provide for such conditions, the proper political setting would probably ipso facto be created also for a solution of the refugee problem in its political aspects. 

The Secretary-General also stated that, although the refugee problem was basically a human problem, reintegration would have to be freely accepted if it were to yield lasting results in the form of economic and political stability. 

The Secretary-General concluded that the perspective was not a discouraging one, provided that the world was willing to assist the region in its economic development and provided, further, that - step by step and as economic conditions permitted - progress regarding the political and psychological obstacles was sought in a constructive spirit and with a sense of justice and realism. 

At the General Assembly's fourteenth session , the question of aid to Palestine refugees was referred to the Assembly's Special Political Committee, which had before it the Secretary-General's proposals for the continuation of United Nations assistance to Palestine refugees, as well as the annual report of the Director of UNRWA. 

On 9 December (A/PV.851) [Chinese|French| Russian|Spanish], in a plenary meeting of the General Assembly, the Committee's recommendations were approved.