501.BB/9–1847
Memorandum of Telephone Conversation, by the Deputy Director of the Office of American Republic Affairs (Woodward1)
In the absence of Assistant Secretary of State Armour, I received a long distance telephone call from Ambassador Pawley2 in which he said that there was considerable Brazilian concern that the U.S. Delegation at the United Nations organization had not voted for Dr. Aranha for the Presidency of the General Assembly. Ambassador Pawley said that he had made the following explanations informally to the interested Brazilians but that he wished to have some official confirmation of these explanations from me, if they were correct.
Ambassador Pawley said that he had surmised that the principal explanation was that the U.S. Government had the impression that Dr. Aranha was not willing to accept the Presidency. Moreover, Ambassador Pawley said that he assumed this distinction would normally be shared sufficiently by various countries so that a citizen of one country would not normally expect to be elected to the position two times in a row.
I told Ambassador Pawley that it was my understanding that his explanations were exactly correct, that our Delegation was committed to the support of another candidate before it had any reason to believe that Dr. Aranha might be willing to accept the Presidency. I commented [Page 133] that, of course, our Delegation and our Government was very pleased now that Dr. Aranha had accepted the nomination and had been elected to the Presidency of the Assembly.