501.BC/3–1447
Memorandum by Mr. Charles P. Noyes to the United States Representative at the United Nations ( Austin )1
Problem of Voting on the Trusteeship Agreement
If any of the other members of the Council should press their amendments to a vote, we shall be faced with the necessity of deciding whether or not to use our veto.
There are three different possibilities:
First, We could announce in advance that because we were an interested party and had a veto, we would abstain on all votes so as to permit the Security Council to reach a decision without our participation. We would of course reserve our right as the other party to the agreement to decline to accept the agreement if the Security Council should insist on any amendments which we were unable to accept.
A Second alternative would be to make no commitment in advance but to watch for the affirmative votes in each case and abstain only [Page 267] if seven members vote in favor. The same reservation would be necessary here if the United States should have abstain.
The Third alternative would be to vote against any amendments we disliked regardless of whether or not it amounted to a veto.
It seems to me there are fairly substantial objections to deciding to follow the third alternative policy. In my opinion, it would lower the prestige of the United States and would be quite inconsistent with our broad policy on the problem of the veto in the Security Council for the United States to put itself in the position of using its veto to protect itself from an amendment. There is clearly no need to do so since, as the other party to the Agreement, we have the right to reject the agreement as a whole if we cannot accept particular amendments. It would seem to me to be far wiser to follow a policy which would not include the use of the veto to effect our purposes in obtaining the approval of this Agreement.
The second alternative has the advantage of avoiding the issue completely unless it actually arises. In my opinion, it is unlikely that seven members of the Security Council will support any of the proposed amendments if the United States states in advance that it cannot accept them. This alternative has the disadvantage of laying us open to the charge that we have vetoed the amendment even though it was not our veto alone which prevented the amendment from carrying. (Viz. The alleged use of our veto last summer against Albania’s application for membership.)
The first alternative has the advantage of obtaining public credit for a decision which we would have made not to use our veto under any circumstances in this proceeding. It seems to me that if we make up our minds that we will not use our veto, there is everything to gain and little to lose by making this fact public. A decision to do this might also help us in connection with a possible vote on Gromyko’s third alternative since it would highlight for other members of the Council the reasons why we did not want to accept Gromyko’s proposed amendment.2
- Mr. Noyes was Special Adviser to Ambassador Austin for Security Council matters.↩
- A copy of this memorandum was transmitted to the Department under cover of a letter of March 14 from Mr. Noyes to the Director of the Office of Special Political Affairs (Rusk). Noyes stated that both Ambassador Austin and the Deputy United States Representative on the Security Council (Johnson), “after a preliminary discussion,” favored the first alternative in the memorandum “on the ground that it sacrifices nothing in reality and that it gives us a high moral position.” Noyes said that the United States Permanent Delegation at New York was anxious for the Department’s views on this question “before the meeting on Monday [March 17], and I shall call you sometime on Monday morning about it.” (501.BC/3–1447)↩