501.BB/1–446
Memorandum of Conversation, by Mr. Adlai E. Stevenson21
Ambassador Taquizadeh, Iranian Ambassador to the U.K. and Chairman of the Iranian Delegation of the General Assembly, called on me today to express his hope for U.S. support for election of Iran to a non-permanent seat on the first Security Council. He explained that he assumed that the Middle Eastern states, including the Arab League and Turkey and Iran, would be entitled to at least one representative on the Security Council. He was very humble and very modest and very friendly.
He pointed out that Iran had been the first state in this area to join in the war actively, was the “bridge of victory”, that it had put all of its resources at the disposal of the Allies, had suffered from lack of food to support the war effort and in many other respects, and that the service of Iran had been expressly recognized by Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin at Teheran.
Ambassador Taquizadeh advised me that his government had reluctantly and “with a heavy heart” decided today not to put the Azerbaijan question on the agenda of the General Assembly due to the consultations that were going forward in Teheran with the U.S. and U.K. representatives.22 The view of his government had been that if nothing came of these discussions after approaching the Soviet Union they had no choice except to bring the matter to the General Assembly and had fully intended to request that it be added to the agenda, but at the last moment they had felt that it might only be disturbing it at a critical time in the life of the United Nations and had concluded not to request its addition to the agenda.
In the circumstances his government felt that it was imperative to be elected to the Security Council and that the opportunity to discuss their problem face to face with the great powers in the Security Council might be of some help; that their Ambassador in Washington [Page 134] had contacted certain people in the State Department and found them sympathetic but due to the Christmas holidays the conversations had not been comprehensive.
He also informed me that Turkey would actively support Iran for non-permanent membership on the Security Council.
I told the Ambassador that I hoped the Arab states, together with Turkey and Iran, would try to agree among themselves upon a candidate for the Security Council, that I understood that Egypt was actively seeking the post, but that so far as I was informed, no commitments had been made and that I felt reasonably confident that my government would consider Iran’s candidacy most sympathetically if there was any common agreement on her selection among the Middle Eastern powers. He said he would initiate some talks with the Arab League states and left with an earnest expression of hope that we would find it convenient to give Iran’s position every possible consideration.
- Mr. Stevenson, formerly acting United States Representative on the Preparatory Commission of the United Nations, and newly designated as an Alternate Representative on the United States Delegation to the General Assembly, had remained in London during the interim between the meetings of the two bodies.↩
- For documentation on this subject, see vol. vii, pp. 289 ff.↩