Foreign Relations of the United States, 1951, The United Nations; The Western Hemisphere, Volume II

UNP Files, Lot 59 D 237

Memorandum of Conversations, by Mr. Ward P. Allen, Adviser, United States Delegation to the General Assembly

confidential

[Paris,] January 22, 1952.

Subject: Membership Question

Participants:	(Separate conversations)
	Ambassador Arne Sunde, Norwegian Delegation
	Mr. Pierre Pescatore, Luxembourg Delegation
	Ward P. Allen, US Delegation

Ambassador Sunde stated that Norway will vote for the Chilean amendment¹ which deletes paragraphs 2 through 6 of the Peruvian resolution and for paragraph 7 which merely substitutes a recommendation that the Security Council reconsider the pending applications. He believes those amendments will be approved, but if they should not pass, the Norwegian Delegation is still uncertain as to whether it will vote against or abstain on the Peruvian draft.

After I had explained to Mr. Pescatore our position on the Peruvian resolution, he stated that the Luxembourg Delegation is opposed to it and will probably vote against, but may abstain. Their objections are that the resolution destroys by over-emphasis the legal aspects of the qualifications; disregards the necessary subjective judgement of each Member necessarily involved in their determination of whether a state is “peace loving” etc., violates the right of each state not to reveal the reasons which leads it to a vote and disregards the political imponderables which necessarily go to make up the decision of each member in a given case.

He agreed with my view that the Argentine amendment² calling for a special session of the General Assembly to consider the problem would not be advisable and could produce no productive results and similarly that the Argentine amendment calling for Security Council reconsideration and report to the present session of the General Assembly was equally undesirable. As to the Chilean amendment, 1 indicated, of course, that we would oppose the proposal for the deletion of paragraphs 2 through 6 and with respect to the Chilean substitute for paragraph 1 pointed out the lack of clarity and the technical omission of the Libyan and Vietnam applications.

1. UN Doc. A/C.l/706, January 22, 1952; for text, see GA (VI), Annexes, agenda item 60.
2. UN Doc. A/C.l/704, submitted to the First Committee on January 22. The text is incorporated into the proceedings of the First Committee; see GA (VI), First Committee, p. 230.