Office of the Historian

IO Files: US(P)/A/C.1/33

Memorandum of Conversation, by Mr. John C. Ross, Adviser, United States Delegation to the United Nations General Assembly

confidential
[Paris,] September 30, 1948.

Faris Bey1 took me aside after the Committee 1 meeting this morning and asked me to convey the following message to Ambassador Austin which I did.

Faris Bey said that he felt it was necessary for him to introduce an amendment to the Canadian atomic energy resolution, in effect requesting the Atomic Energy Commission to resume the remainder of the work contemplated for it by the original General Assembly Resolution, namely, the drafting of a treaty.2 Faris Bey said he did not think this action would in the slightest way derogate from the objection which he shares of making it very clear that it is the Russians and their associates who have blocked any progress in the field of atomic energy control. On the contrary, he said the process of drafting a treaty would make very much clearer to everyone who had not actively worked on atomic energy exactly what the specific points of difference are with the Russians, and thus this would further serve the purpose of revealing the true position of the Russians.

  1. Faris el-Khoury, Chairman of the Syrian Delegation; Permanent Syrian Representative at the United Nations.↩
  2. The Syrian amendment, A/C.1/309, was introduced on October 1; for text, see GA (III/1), First Committee, Annexes, pp. 4–5.↩