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

501.AA/11–1446

Memorandum by the Former United States Representative to Albania (Jacobs) to the Deputy Director of the Office of European Affairs (Hickerson)

[Washington,] November 14, 1946.

For the following reasons it is believed that the United States should oppose the admission of Albania to UN when consideration of that question comes up again before the Security Council upon recommendation made by the General Assembly on November 11, 1946:

1. The U.S. opposed the admission of Albania during the Security Council’s consideration of Albania’s application in August, for the reason that the present regime in control of the country has failed to meet its international obligations by steadfastly refusing to recognize the treaties in existence between the U.S. and Albania when Italy invaded Albania on April 8, 1939. The U.S. was prepared, however, as proposed at the meeting of the Security Council on August 28, 1946 to agree to Albania’s admission under the “rule of universality”.

2. Since the occasions referred to above, Albania has renewed its refusal to recognize the aforementioned treaties in Prime Minister Hoxha’s note of August 13, 1946 to the U.S. Mission at Tirana (although it did accept multilateral treaties) and, as a result of this renewed refusal and for other reasons, the Department has now withdrawn its Mission from Albania.⁵²

3. The withdrawal of the Mission referred to above constitutes a “rupture” of relations of sufficient gravity to warrant not only adherence to the Department’s previous policy of opposing Albania’s admission but also the withdrawal of our offer to agree to admission under the rule of universality.

4. The Secretary has indicated his unwillingness to recognize the regime in Albania at the present time even if it should agree to the continued validity of the treaties (Delsec’s telegram to Department no. 968, September 20, 1946).⁵³ If we should now agree to Albania’s admission to UN and the regime suddenly agrees to the treaties, it would be most difficult for the U.S. to refuse to recognize the regime and exchange diplomatic representatives.

5. In addition to the foregoing reasons the conduct of the present regime in inaugurating a campaign of calumny against the Mission and false charges against Mr. Harry T. Fultz of the Mission, which involves the barbarous treatment of several Albanians, is ample evidence of the ruthless and unscrupulous character of the regime to indicate its unworthiness of membership in UN.

6. Finally, now that our Mission has been withdrawn, we can use as additional arguments against Albania’s admission the facts that the regime (a) is carrying on a regime of terror against all opposition and is thus wholly unworthy of designation as “democratic”, (b) has mobilized its manpower on a war footing at a time when UN is striving for peace and security, and (c) has compromised the independent status of Albania by permitting the country to become honeycombed with Yugoslav and Soviet advisers

J. E. Jacobs

[The Security Council took up the General Assembly resolution regarding re-examination of applications for membership on November 29 (SC, 1st yr., 2nd series, pages 507–522). Subsequently, informal consultations on the part of the President of the Security Council (Johnson) with Council members established that there was general agreement to defer for the time being Security Council reconsideration of the applications (ibid., pages 523–525).]

52. For documentation on this subject, see vol. vi, pp. 1 ff.
53. Vol vi, p. 27.