Editorial Note
The General Assembly on October 31 referred the question of new members to the First Committee. That committee’s recommendations were transmitted to the General Assembly in three reports, one on November 9 (United Nations, Official Records of the General Assembly, First Session, Second Part, First Committee, page 318, annex 6; hereafter cited as GA(I/2), First Committee) and the other two on November 19 (United Nations, Official Records of the General Assembly, First Session,. Second Part, Plenary Meetings, pages 1493 and 1494, annex 39 and pages 1494 and 1495, annex 40, respectively; hereafter cited as GA(I/2), Plenary).
The first report, on the admission of Afghanistan, Iceland, and Sweden, recommended favorable action and the draft resolution accompanying the report was adopted by the General Assembly with [Page 454] one change on November 9; the representatives of the three countries were seated on November 19. The second report recommended to the General Assembly a draft resolution which asked the Security Council to reconsider those applications that the Council had examined but on which it had made no recommendations; the General Assembly adopted this resolution unanimously on November 19. In its third report the First Committee recommended a draft resolution in which the General Assembly would request the Security Council “to appoint a Committee to confer with a Committee on procedure of the General Assembly, with a view to preparing rules governing the admission of new Members which will be acceptable both to the General Assembly and to the Security Council”; this was adopted by the General Assembly on November 19 by 32 votes to 9 with one abstention, the United States voting negatively.
Throughout the deliberations of both the First Committee and the General Assembly the United States Delegation followed closely the policies established in the position papers of October 4 and October 28, supplemented by a Departmental telegraphic instruction of November 7 (telegram 275, November 7, 6 p.m., to New York, (501.BB/11–446)) which set forth this Government’s judgment that a proposal by Australia was incorrect in claiming for the General Assembly primary and final responsibility in the admissions process. In the same telegraphic instruction the Department also restated its objection to vetoes of membership applications “on grounds not found in [the] Charter”, a principle invoked by Senator Connally subsequently in the First Committee on November 11 when certain states attempted to fix the attitude and conduct of an applicant state during the Second World War as a criterion of acceptability for membership (GA (1/2), First Committee, pages 321–323).