Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947, General; The United Nations, Volume I

USUN Files

Record of an Informal Meeting Among Certain Representatives on the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission

confidential

[New York,] October 3, 1947.

An informal meeting took place at General McNaughton’s Office on October 3rd, at which the following were present:—

Mr. Harry		Australia
Mr. Errera	}	Belgium
Commandant Ducq
Capt. Alvaro Alberto	}	Brazil
da Motta e Silva
General McNaughton	}	Canada
Mr. Ignatieff
Mr. Wei		China
Mr. de Rose		France
Mr. Miles		United Kingdom
Mr. Osborn	}	United States
Mr. Arneson

The following general conclusions were reached:—

1. It is not desirable that atomic energy or disarmament issues should be allowed to obscure the central theme of the Assembly, which appears to be how to get round Russian obstruction in the United Nations.

2. Insofar as the initiative lay with us, atomic energy and disarmament issues should be raised only to assist this main theme.

3. This makes it desirable to avoid detailed technical issues when atomic energy or disarmament are raised, and direct appeal to the Second Report of the Atomic Energy Commission should be avoided. In this connexion it was generally agreed that the Report could not get the attention it deserved from this Session of the Assembly, and any attempt to get the Assembly to approve the Report would probably result in a large number of abstentions on the ground that the Delegations had not had time to study it.

4. It is, however, most desirable that the Assembly should become acquainted with the atomic energy problem as quickly as possible, and the First and Second Reports of the Atomic Energy Commission ought to be transmitted formally to all member nations of the United Nations at an early stage.

(In this connexion the General Assembly resolution of 24th January 1946 called upon the Security Council “in the appropriate cases” to transmit reports to the General Assembly and to members of the United Nations as well as to the Economic and Social Council and other organs within the framework of the United Nations).

5. At this Assembly every opportunity should be taken to educate nations not members of the Atomic Energy Commission in the problems so far met with and the principles adopted by the majority. An excellent opportunity for doing this should be provided in the course of consideration by Committee 1 of the Soviet resolution on warmongering, Section 4 (A/BUR/86),¹ and, if the matter is not then exhausted, when the report of the Security Council is considered.

6. Even if Section 4 of the Soviet resolution is not voted on separately or as an integral part of the main resolution, it is most desirable that, in the course of the debate, its sense should be corrected to show what the December 14th, 1946 resolution had actually required and what are the true causes of its non-implementation. If the opportunity offered, it might be desirable to consider a distinct resolution on this subject, which, after all, is somewhat artificially injected into the resolution on warmongering.

1. Andrey Yanuaryevich Vyshinsky, Chairman of the Soviet Delegation, introduced the resolution under reference in an address during the general debate phase of the Second Session of the General Assembly (84th Plenary Meeting, September 18); for text of the address, see GA(ii), Plenary, pp. 81–106. For text of the resolution, see telegram Delga 3, September 19, p. 76. For documentation on United States policy with respect to the resolution, see pp. 76 ff.