Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, General; the United Nations, Volume I, Part 1

501.BB/10–448: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Acting Secretary of State ¹

[Paris,] October 4, 1948—1 p. m.

Delga 208. Following is text of Mexican draft resolution entitled “Appeal to the Great Powers to Renew Their Efforts to Compose Their Differences and Establish a Lasting Peace” referred to GC by GA president, circulated as A/662/Rev 1.²

Request for the inclusion of an additional item in the agenda of the third regular session referred to the General Committee by the President of the General Assembly.

Mexico: Draft resolution

Appeal to the Great Powers to Renew Their Efforts to Compose Their Differences and Establish a Lasting Peace.

The SA[sic]

1. Whereas it is the essential purpose of the UN to maintain international peace and security and to that end it must coordinate its efforts to bring about by peaceful means the settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace,

2. Whereas the UN should be a center for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of this common end,

3. Whereas the UN cannot fully attain its aims so long as the recent war remains in process of liquidation and so long as all the peace treaties have not been concluded and put into force,

4. Whereas the great Allied Powers which bore the heaviest burden in the war and whose common sacrifice and effort were the prime cause of victory have reaffirmed, on many solemn occasions, their determination to maintain and strengthen in the peace that unity of purpose and of action which has made possible the victory of the UN,

5. Whereas the aforementioned Allied Powers which undertook, at the second Moscow conference [sic], responsibility for drafting and concluding the peace treaties have not been able, after three years of effort, to obtain the full realization of their high mission by building a just and lasting peace,

6. Whereas the disagreement between the said powers in a matter of vital importance to all the UN is at the present time the cause of the deepest anxiety among all the peoples of the world, and

7. Whereas the UN, in the performance of its most sacred mission, is bound to afford its assistance and co-operation in the settlement of a situation the continuation of which involves grave dangers for international peace,

Therefore, the GA resolves:

Firstly, to express its confidence that the great Allied Powers will determine their policy in the spirit of the declaration to which they subscribed in the Crimea, in which they reaffirmed their faith in the principles of the Atlantic Charter, their pledge in the declaration by the UN and their determination to build in co-operation with other peace-loving nations a world order under law, dedicated to peace, security, freedom and the general well-being of all mankind.³

Secondly, to affirm its adoption of that part of the declaration signed at Yalta on 11 February 1945 by Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, which proclaims that ‘only with the continuing and growing co-operation and understanding among our three countries, and among all the peace-loving nations, can the highest aspiration of humanity be realized. A secure and lasting peace which will, in the words of the Atlantic Charter, “afford assurance that all the men, in all the lands, may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want”’.

Thirdly, to recommend the powers signatories to the agreements of the second Moscow conference to redouble their efforts, in a spirit of solidarity and mutual understanding, to achieve in the briefest possible time the final settlement of the war and the conclusion of all the peace treaties.

Fourthly, to recommend the aforementioned powers to associate with them, in the performance of such a noble task, the states signatories of the Washington declaration of 1 January 1942, either through the GA of the UN [or] by means of a special conference of [at which] all the states which subscribed or adhered to the said declaration [should be represented]”.

Marshall

1. The Secretary of State was in Paris as head of the U.S. Delegation to the third regular session of the General Assembly which began on Sept. 21; for documentation regarding the representation of the United States at Paris, see pp. 9–21.
2. The Mexican proposal was presented to the General Assembly on Sept. 28 by Dr. Luis Padilla Nervo, Permanent Representative of Mexico at the United Nations and Chairman of the Mexican Delegation to the General Assembly. He did this in his address to the General Assembly during the General Debate phase of the session. For text of the proposal, see United Nations. Official Records of the General Assembly, Third Session, Part I, Plenary Meetings, pp. 274–276. (Hereafter cited as GA (III/1), Plenary.)
3. For a convenient reference source with texts of the wartime documents herein cited, see 81st Congress, 1st session, Senate Document No. 123, A Decade of American Foreign Policy: Basic Documents, 1941–1949 (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1950), pp. 1–50.