Castro and Khrushchev stole the show at the UN 60 years ago

The 75th UN General Assembly is taking place against a backdrop of global crises. But it will struggle to match the drama of the 15th session back in 1960, writes Simon Hall

Fidel Castro (left) addresses the delegates in New York (Getty)

Deepening animosity between the world’s two largest economies. An impetuous and unpredictable leader of a nuclear-armed superpower. And a United States of America convulsed by racial turmoil and just weeks away from a historic presidential election. Headline news, not from 2020, but from 60 years ago.

In September 1960 a stellar cast of world statesmen – including Dwight David Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States; Nikita Khrushchev, the pugnacious leader of the Soviet Union; the prime ministers of the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia; and major players from across Africa and Asia, including Nehru, Sukarno, Kwame Nkrumah and Nasser – gathered in New York, for the opening of the UN General Assembly, at a critical moment in history.

Despite a brief thaw in the Cold War, which had seen Khrushchev meet with Eisenhower at Camp David in September 1959, hopes for a meaningful rapprochement had quickly soured. In the bitter aftermath of the U-2 incident, in which an American spy plane had been shot down over Russia on 1 May 1960, and its pilot Francis Gary Powers captured, Khrushchev lashed out at the perfidy of the US.