IO Files
Minutes of Twelfth Meeting of the United States Delegation to the General Assembly, Paris, November 15, 1951
US/A/M(Chr)/199
[Here follows list of persons present (53).]1
With the Secretary [of State] in the chair, Mr. Taylor asked Mr. Hyde to make his presentation of the question of Italian participation in the Trusteeship Council (TC). He said this was only one of the membership problems for this Assembly. Mr. Hyde would be the adviser for Mr. Vorys, who would handle this problem in Committee.
Mr. Hyde began by stating that he would address himself to the Trusteeship Council aspirations of Italy as being only a part of Italy’s general desire for UN membership. He recalled that Italy was only one of the nine candidates which in the opinion of the US were qualified for admission as members. The test set forth in the Charter in Article 4, paragraph 1, was that applicants, to be qualified for membership, must be peace-loving states, willing to accept the obligations of the Charter. In this case, the US felt that Italy was entitled to special consideration in that she had been made an administering power by the TC over her former colony of Somaliland.
Mr. Hyde recalled that at Ottawa the Secretary had been given an Aide-Mémoire by the Italians, stating that if the US and others were willing to try to surmount the previous difficulties in regard to Italian membership, the Italians would like to present a plan. (In this connection, Mr. Hyde pointed out the additional provision in the Charter, Article 4, paragraph 2, in which the procedure for admission of new members was set out. This could only be accomplished by the General Assembly upon a recommendation by the Security Council.) The essence of the Italian plan was that the GA by a two-thirds vote should admit Italy since the previous Soviet vetoes of her application had been legally unjustified in terms of the Charter requirements. The lack of legal justification lay in the fact that the Soviets would agree to vote for Italy’s admission only if at the same time certain of the USSR satellites would be admitted.
Mr. Hyde then referred to the Tri-Partite declaration made in Washington by the US, UK, and France, to the effect that they would use every effort to obtain membership in the UN for Italy. Since the time that that declaration had been made, there had been many talks with the Italians. Much of the time had been spent in pointing out to the Italians the difficulties involved in disregarding the Soviet veto. [Page 389] Just as the Delegation was sailing on the America, Premier de Gasperi had written the Secretary urging a political will by the United States to circumvent the veto and resulting juridical difficulties. Mr. Hyde added that undoubtedly the Italian Ambassador would want to discuss this letter and its ideas with the Secretary during their appointment that afternoon.
On the problem of membership in general, and the question of the Italian problem in connection therewith, Mr. Hyde said that the position of the Department had been that the US should accept any plan which would achieve the results of admitting qualified applicants so long as such a plan were consistent with the Charter.
The Belaunde plan the Department did not think was consistent with the Charter. Thus unless strong support developed for it, the US would vote against it. Such sentiment favoring the plan would involve consultation with the Department. It involved admission of Italy by a ⅔ vote of the Assembly, on the theory that it was the supreme UN authority, and a request to the Court to find that the Soviet negative vote was without juridical basis.
There was another possibility in this matter. It could be characterized either as a deal with the Soviets or a delegation of power by the Security Council to the General Assembly. This involved having the US vote for or abstain on all European candidates, satellites included, in the Security Council. When the question came up in the General Assembly, we would have to trust in the hope that a two-thirds majority would only vote for the desirable candidates and reject the satellites. In this connection, he recalled the recent speech by Beria2 on the occasion of the Soviet anniversary of the October Revolution. Beria had said that the USSR attitude had been, and continued to be, to let Italy in the UN if the Eastern European states were also admitted. This forecast a traditional Soviet attitude.
In regard to tactics for Italian participation in the Trusteeship Council, the Department position was to get quick action in C.4 for the Security Council to consider Italy’s application as a special and urgent case. In addition we would want to hold off on C.1 debate on the Belaunde plan until this approach had been taken. Mr. Hyde added that Italian agreement would be necessary before this approach would be taken. We would not want to follow this tactic unless Italy felt it would help her. We and they were fairly well aware that a Soviet veto was a 99% certainty. Vyshinsky had intimated in the general debate that the USSR veto would be based on Charter grounds, i.e., that the Soviet Union opposed Italian membership because, it was claimed, Italian membership in NATO prevented Italy from being a peace-loving state.
[Page 390]Mr. Ross had talked with the Italians last night and found them agreeable to our approach being followed. However, it would seem that the Italians would then say we had tried our way and when it failed they would like to try their way. Assuming the Italians would agree to our approach, we would begin it in C.4 very soon. We had been working with the UK and France along these lines.
Should the matter come up in C.1 on the basis of the Belaunde plan, the suggested position would be to seek amendment of Article 86 in order to allow the Italians to participate in the Trusteeship Council with full voting rights. Granted that this would be a propaganda move, since the amendment process would be subject to a Soviet veto just as Security Council matters were, the next step would be to seek to give Italy the right to be represented in all the main committees, but without a vote. This would seem to be about the extent to which we could go in helping the Italians under the tri-partite statement.
The Secretary wondered if consideration had been given to the chances of submitting the results of a Soviet veto to the ICJ. Mr. Fisher thought that it would be very wise to consider ways of getting around the veto, perhaps in some such way. He recalled that an Advisory Opinion of the ICJ had held that a Security Council recommendation was essential before General Assembly action was possible. Some way would have to be found to get a Security Council recommendation which the Soviets could not veto. The other advisory opinion on membership which said that members of the Security Council could not attach to their votes conditions extraneous to those listed in the Charter had been vitiated in Mr. Fisher’s opinion by the statement at the end that of course if a Security Council member simply voted against such a recommendation, without attaching reasons, there would be nothing the Court could do. Mr. Cohen suggested breaking the Gordian knot and proposing that Italy be allowed to sit in all General Assembly Plenary and Committee meetings and to express its ideas and how it would vote if it were allowed to. This would be on the assumption that we did not change our ideas on membership as expressed earlier.
Mr. Ross recalled the attitude of the Italian observers in New York which had consistently been against any glorified observership. This of course had been due in part to their bargaining position. If they had indicated they could agree to anything less than full membership, their chances of achieving it, no matter how small, would have been reduced to zero. The night before, the Italians in Paris had told him that they agreed to our approach in the following sense. It was like a frame into which the Belaunde plan or a similar scheme would properly fit.
Ambassador Kirk said that the more we did along the lines suggested the more we tipped our hand that we might be willing to reach [Page 391] a quid pro quo arrangement. The Russian bargaining position on this matter was fairly unassailable.
Mr. Taylor said that in Washington the Italian attitude had been the same as that described by Mr. Ross. He conceded that they might change when they found how difficult the chances of surmounting a Soviet veto really were. In connection with Mr. Cohen’s suggestion, he said that Mr. Dulles had been thinking of something along those lines for Japan.
Ambassador Gross wondered whether the US would only take the proposed Committee 4 approach if the Italians agreed. Mr. Hyde said that the UK and French working-level people had agreed that it would not be wise to try this approach if the Italians themselves thought it would kill their chances of getting in. It was true, however, that this had never actually been mentioned in the talks of the Secretary with De Gasperi in Washington.
Mr. Maffitt wondered if the Delegation had complete information on how much domestic harm would be done to the Italian government should our membership tactic fail. The Italians had left dark insinuations as to the calamities which would befall them. Mr. Sandifer said this aspect had been considered in Washington, but no black and white answer was possible. Mr. Vorys wondered about this aspect too. Mr. Nolting offered the information that a telegram from Ambassador Dunn placed this matter on the same level of vital importance as the revision of the Italian Peace Treaty, as far as the Italians were concerned. …
On the basis of his talks in New York with Count Guidotti, the Italian observer at the UN, Ambassador Gross felt that another exercise to get the Italians admitted, should it fail, would lead them to believe their destiny was really controlled by the Kremlin. Thus it would be unwise in the extreme to embark on some course from which there was no retreat, should things not go exactly as we wished.
Mr. Fisher considered what courses were available. We could go to the SC again and seek to have the Italians evince proof of their qualifications. If the USSR vetoed such a course of action, then we could ask the ICJ for an advisory opinion on the validity of such a veto. We should not ignore the fact that the chances of a negative reaction from the Court were very great. This, of course, would not be a bad result per se. It could be argued that it was better to litigate and lose than to lose only in a political arena. Perhaps a variant of the Belaunde plan might be better than going around the same vicious circle again.
Going back to Mr. Cohen’s idea, Ambassador Kirk wondered if it might not backfire to the extent of the Russians trying to get glorified observership for their satellites. To this, Mr. Cohen answered that we had won so far on this matter, and indications were that we could continue [Page 392] to do so. Mr. Fisher thought any objective test applied to giving this type of membership would assure our favored candidates of winding and the satellites losing.
Mr. Vorys wondered how accommodating the USSR would be in voting in the SC again as they had in the past. Might they not rather veto on Charter grounds this time, thereby preventing our gambit. Mr. Fisher was inclined to agree that the ICJ in any case could only go so far as to point out that extraneous considerations had been attached, a course of action not allowed by the Charter. It would not go to the extent of deciding such political questions as whether Italy or any other state were peace-loving.
Mr. Gerig warned the Delegation that Committee 4 action on this item would come up no later than the following Monday. Mr. Sandifer added that since negotiating had already been begun on the basis of the position as described, USGADel’s decision should be a clear one. The Secretary gathered that there were no differences with the basic position. All that had occurred at the meeting was to have the difficulties pointed out for the Delegation’s benefit. Mr. Hyde recommended that, after the Secretary saw the Italian Ambassador that afternoon, Mr. Vorys should talk with the Italian observer on this matter. The Secretary agreed that all he himself could do would be to say that we were very willing to talk these matters over with the Italians. Mr. Ross added the information that the chief reason the Italian Ambassador would be coming to see the Secretary concerned migration. The Secretary suggested that Mr. Fisher look into the chances of coming up with a variant on the Belaunde plan acceptable to us.
[Here follows brief discussion of other matters.]