Editorial Note
The Conciliation Committee, established by the First Committee of the General Assembly on September 29 (see the editorial note, page 429), held 29 meetings between October 4 and October 22. The Committee, which consisted of General Assembly President Carlos Romulo, United Nations Secretary-General Trygve Lie, Chairman of the First Committee Lester B. Pearson, and Vice Chairman of the First Committee Selim Sarper, held meetings with the representatives of Albania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Greece, and also with the representatives of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union. In the course of its work, the Committee developed a series of suggestions for draft agreements between Greece and its northern neighbors. These agreements involved the renewal of diplomatic relations, the preparation of frontier conventions for the settlement of frontier incidents, and the establishment of mixed frontier commissions. The Committee also advanced a suggestion for a formula which would cover the Albanian-Greek frontier. The Albanian delegation refused to consider the proposals of the Conciliation Committee unless the Greek Government formally abandoned its claim to Northern Epirus. Albania also rejected significant aspects of the proposed frontier conventions and the mixed frontier commissions. The Bulgarian delegation declined to approve the Committee’s suggestions unless all parties concerned also did so. Yugoslavia was favorably inclined toward the Committee’s work, and the Greek delegation generally accepted all of the proposals. A preliminary report to the First Committee on the work of the Conciliation Committee was presented in a letter of October 18 from General Assembly President Romulo; for the text of the letter (U.N. doc. A/C.1/503), see United Nations, Official Records of the General Assembly, Fourth Session, First Committee, Annex, page 12 (hereafter cited as GA (IV), First Committee, Annex); or Department of State Bulletin, October 31, 1949, pages 657–658; or A Decade of American Foreign Policy, 1941–49, page 772. The Conciliation Committee submitted its formal and more detailed report to the First Committee on October 22; for the text of the report (U.N. doc. A/C.1/506), see GA (IV), First Committee, Annex, page 12, or Howard, The Greek Question in the Fourth General Assembly, pages 24–29. For brief, authoritative accounts of the work of the Conciliation Committee, see ibid., pages 8–9 or Harry N. Howard, “Greece and Its Balkan Neighbors (1948–1949): The United Nations Attempts at Conciliation,” Balkan Studies, 1966, Volume 7, Number 1, pages 19–24.