IO Files
Memorandum of Conversation, by Ambassador Philip C. Jessup of the United States Delegation to the General Assembly
US/A/3390
Subject: Security Council Slate
| Participants: | Ambassador Jacob A. Malik,1 USSR Delegation |
| Ambassador Philip C. Jessup, United States Delegation |
Mr. Malik, USSR, approached me before Committee I began this morning and said he wished to talk to me about the seats on the Security Council. He said that he hoped we could now return to the provisions of the Charter in selecting states for the SC. He said that the agreement reached in 1946 had worked very well until we broke it by putting in Yugoslavia. I told him that we had not broken any agreement and asked him what provision of the Charter he referred to. He said the Charter requires geographical distribution. I said we recognized the principle of geographic distribution but he seemed to be referring rather to political distribution. He insisted that you could not follow the principle of geographic distribution without the agreement of the states in the geographic area. He repeated his reference to the agreement of 1946. I told him that we did not share his view but that this was a question which I was not handling personally. [Page 96] I asked him if he would like to talk to Ambassador Austin or Ambassador Gross. He replied that he wished to talk to me about it and would wait two or three days for my reply. He said he wished me to consider this as an official approach. He then added laughingly that he understood that Mr. Romulo was now holding himself out as a new Slavonic state which should succeed to this seat and said that while they would be glad to include the Philippines, he did not think that the qualifications had yet been demonstrated. I told him I would talk with him again later about this.
- Ambassador Malik was Permanent Representative of the Soviet Union to the United Nations.↩