501.PA/8–745: Telegram
The Acting Secretary of State to the Ambassador in the United Kingdom ( Winant )
8632. Referring to Enclosure Number 1 to your despatch Number 24672 of August 7, 1945,13 please communicate to Foreign Office the following observations of the Department upon the Draft Proposals for an Educational and Cultural Organization of the United Nations. It should be emphasized these observations are offered for discussion before the November Conference and will not necessarily be this Government’s final position in the Conference. Our comment is directed toward the draft published on August 1, 1945 by the Conference of Allied Ministers of Education which we assume will be the basic document for consideration at the November Conference.
Two substantive changes in the draft are suggested. First that Article V, Section C be amended to assign one vote to each member state on questions of structure, organization and budget. For all other Conference decisions each delegate would have one vote. Second, substantive proposal is that status of Executive Board clearly be that of the governing body of the Organization between Conference sessions and responsible to the Conference for its actions. Therefore we would suggest substituting for present Article VI, Section B, paragraph 1 the following text: “The Executive Board shall be the governing [Page 1515] body of the Organization between sessions of the Conference”. Also suggest making President of Conference ex officio member Executive Board and entitling Chairmen of standing committees of the Conference to attend Executive Board sessions, without right to vote, when matters of immediate concern to their committees are under consideration. Further suggest specifying Director-General, is responsible to the Conference.
Besides substantive changes the following suggestions are offered to spell out certain matters implicit in present draft. First, role of scientists, scientific collaboration and interchange of scientific knowledge should be emphasized and made more explicit. This suggestion obviously has no bearing on scientific research for military purposes, which has always been carefully guarded without preventing extensive cooperation and exchange of information among scientists. Second, the possible relationship of this Organization with non-governmental international associations in educational, scientific and cultural fields could well be spelled out more clearly. One useful provision would be for appointment of advisory committees to the Organization composed of representatives of such associations.
In addition to these four suggestions there should be textual changes to make this Constitution conform more closely to the United Nations Charter. This matter will inevitably come up in the Conference and the proposals of the United States Delegation will be presented at that time, together with possible additional suggestions which the United States Delegation may wish to offer at the Conference.
- Not printed. This despatch transmitted an invitation from the British Government to the Government of the United States to be represented at the conference being called to consider the creation of an Educational and Cultural Organization of the United Nations. In airgram 2351, September 12, the Ambassador was instructed to accept the invitation on behalf of the United States (501.PA/8–745).↩