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Memorandum of Telephone Conversation, by the Assistant Secretary of State for United Nations Affairs (Hickerson)
Memorandum for the Files
I talked to Mr. Gross on the telephone today about Ross’ memorandum of September 291 concerning status of Trygve Lie and Lie’s suggestion that he write letters to the President of the Security Council [Page 129] and to the President of the General Assembly stating that he was not a candidate for reelection for Secretary-General. I told Mr. Gross that I felt very strongly that Lie Should not send these letters. He replied that Lie had calmed down and had agreed not to send them. Mr. Gross said that Lie feels that there should be a decision this week as to whether or not the Security Council will take action in regard to Lie’s reappointment and if not, the matter should be taken up with the General Assembly next week. I told Mr. Gross that I felt that action should be taken as soon as practicable but I was inclined to think that the time schedule might be a little too short.
I asked Mr. Gross whether there were any developments about Soviet attitude toward Lie. I told him that Jebb had told me 10 days ago that he was going to speak to Malik or Vishinsky again. Mr. Gross said that Jebb had not spoken to them but that he himself had spoken to Malik and Malik had replied that Mr. Vishinsky would have to handle this and he had no information about Soviet attitude.
I asked Mr. Gross if he knew whether Jebb had ever spoken to Chung [Tsiang?]. He said that as far as he knew Jebb had not. He said that he thought perhaps he should speak to Chung about this and I agreed with him that this would be a good idea.
After a little conversation Mr. Gross and I agreed that it would be desirable for the U.S. as President of the Security Council this month to take the initiative in polling the Security Council, especially the permanent members, regarding the reelection of Mr. Lie and decide on the basis of that whether or not there should be Security Council action or whether we should go straight to the General Assembly.
I told Mr. Gross that my own feeling was that the end result, wholly apart from whether or not there was Security Council action, should be that as soon as we are in a position to do so, we should approach Mr. Lie and ask whether or not he would be prepared to accept reelection for a 5-year term and that Mr. Lie should reply that he could not accept a 5-year term but that he would agree to serve for 3 years. I added that this was, of course contingent upon the British, French and other interested countries agreeing that he should be reelected for 3 rather than 2 years as they now propose. Mr. Gross indicated general agreement.
- Not found in Department of State files.↩