Office of the Historian

IO Files: US/A/1794

Memorandum of Conversation, by the United States Representative at the United Nations (Austin)

secret
[New York,] September 28, 1949.

At Sir Alexander Cadogan’s dinner last night [September 27], Mr. Tsarapkin1 approached me in great excitement and stated that he had heard that the United States would support Yugoslavia’s candidacy for the Security Council. He said that the consequences of such an action would be far-reaching and indicated a belief that the United States was to blame for the Yugoslav candidacy.

I told Mr. Tsarapkin that the Yugoslav candidacy was not the result of United States action and that the United States had not made up its mind to vote for Yugoslavia until this morning [September 27]. I told Mr. Tsarapkin that we were not campaigning for Yugoslavia, although we would vote for her as an Eastern European, communist state qualified to fill the seat being vacated by the Ukraine.

Mr. Tsarapkin then stated that we could stop the Yugoslav candidacy if we wished to do so. I told him that we had taken a considered decision and I very much doubted we would make any effort to oppose the Yugoslav candidacy.

  1. Semyon K. Tsarapkin, Alternate Soviet Representative on the Security Council and Member of the Delegation of the Soviet Union to this session of the General Assembly.↩