Foreign Relations of the United States, 1946, General; the United Nations, Volume I

IO Files: SD/A/91

Memorandum of Conversation, by G. Hayden Raynor, Special Assistant to the Director of the Office of European Affairs (Matthews)

confidential

[Washington,] October 2, 1946.

Participants:	Mr. C. P. Hebert, Counselor of the Canadian Embassy
	Mr. Wailes, of BC
	Mr. Hayden Raynor, of EUR

[Here follows discussion of the Canadian Embassy memorandum sent to the Department on September 26. “The conversation centered on the four conventions contained at the end of Paragraph 10 of the Canadian memorandum. In our conversation we followed generally the points made in Mr. Popper’s memorandum of October 1. …”]

After completing our discussion of the Canadian memorandum I referred to the inquiry he had made at our last meeting relative to the makeup of the ECOSOC.¹⁵ I stated that we were in full agreement that the economic importance of a state was an important factor in determining the membership of this Council. I quoted to him the pertinent paragraph in our working paper on alternate candidates for Council posts which sets forth this very clearly. I added, however, that we differ from their view on the matter of membership by the Big Five. (Mr. Hebert had suggested that the Canadians felt that only the Big Three should be continuous members.) I stated that we felt, not necessarily because of the importance of all of the Big Five from the economic point of view, but because of the concept of Big Five unanimity on which the United Nations had been built, that the Big Five should be continuously represented on all major organs of the United Nations.

During the discussion I inquired if Mr. Hebert had received any Canadian views on the makeup of the Trusteeship Council. He indicated that their first preference was for an European state, either Sweden or Denmark, and that if two seats were elected they felt the other seat should be held by a non-European state. He indicated that he had supposed that the South American countries would feel entitled to this seat and that in that event they had been prepared to favor Brazil. He indicated that Egypt would be an acceptable candidate to them for the second seat. As in his previous conversation he indicated a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the Philippines as a candidate and urged that consideration be given to India as a member of this Council but not this year.

Mr. Hebert seemed entirely satisfied with the informal views expressed to him. I think with the exception of Syria that we will find the Canadians and ourselves in quite close agreement in New York on the question of slates.

15. This refers to a meeting held on September 16 at which Mr. Hebert “… informed us that he was instructed to ascertain informally our reaction to the following proposal. He stated that they felt that in the economic world Canada and certain other states such as the Netherlands were equally as important as France and China and should be so recognized in the ECOSOC. His proposal is this: The Big Three (the US, UK and USSR) should always have seats on the ECOSOC. Half of the remaining fifteen seats should always be filled from a group of twelve important economic states such as Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden, presumably France and China, Australia, Brazil, etc. Mr. Wailes and I promised to ascertain what the reaction of the Department might be to this suggestion and to talk to him informally about it later.” (IO Files: Document US/A/14).