Editorial Note
The Fourth Session of the United Nations General Assembly opened on September 20, 1949. Despite the opposition of the Soviet Union and the states of Eastern Europe, the Assembly agreed to place the Greek question on its agenda once again. The Assembly also referred the issue to its First Committee for consideration. During the general debate in the General Assembly (222d to 229th Meetings, September 21–26), various aspects of the Greek question were raised. For the official records of these meetings, see United Nations, Official Records of the General Assembly, Fourth Session, Plenary Meetings, pages 1–95. (Hereafter cited as GA (IV), Plenary.) For the text of [Page 430] Secretary of State Acheson’s address to the Assembly Plenary Session on September 21, see Department of State Bulletin, October 3, 1949, pages 489–497. For an account of the Greek question in the general debate of the Assembly, see Harry N. Howard, The Greek Question in the Fourth General Assembly of the United Nations, Department of State Publication 3785, International Organization and Conference Series III, 47, reprinted from the Department of State Bulletin, February 27 and March 6, 1950 (Washington: Department of State, Division of Publications, Office of Public Affairs, 1950), pages 3–5. (Hereafter cited as Howard, The Greek Question in the Fourth General Assembly.)
The first phase of discussion of the Greek question in the First (Political and Security) Committee of the United Nations General Assembly began at the Committee’s 275th Meeting on September 28 with the consideration of an Australian proposal for the appointment of a new Conciliation Committee whose objective would be to reach a pacific settlement of the existing differences between Greece on the one hand and Albania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia on the other. The resolution, which was supported by the United States Delegation, was adopted by the First Committee at its 276th Meeting on September 29. At this same meeting, the Committee rejected a Polish resolution concerned with a possible appeal for clemency in Greece in the case of capital punishment. At the 280th, 282d, 283d, and 284th Meetings, October 3, 4, and 5, the Polish and Byelorussian representatives on the Committee sought unsuccessfully to raise again the issue of the executions in Greece. For the official record of this phase of discussion of the Greek question in the First Committee, see United Nations, Official Records of the General Assembly, Fourth Session, First Committee, Summary Records of Meetings, pages 3–14, 29–33, 38–52. (Hereafter cited as GA (IV), First Committee.) For the text of the Australian resolution (U.N. doc. A/C.1/493), adopted by the First Committee, see United Nations, Official Records of the General Assembly, Fourth Session, Plenary Meetings, Annex, page 61. (Hereafter cited as GA (IV), Plenary Meetings, Annex.) For the text of the statement made by the United States Representative to the First Committee on September 28 in favor of the Australian resolution, see Department of State Bulletin, October 10, 1949, pages 542–543 or Documents on American Foreign Relations, Volume XI, 1949, pages 662–664. For an account of the discussion in the First Committee during this first phase of consideration of the Greek question, see Howard, The Greek Question in the Fourth General Assembly, pages 5–8.