310.2/7–2952
Memorandum of Conversation, by Paul W. Jones of the Office of United Nations Political and Security Affairs
- Subject:
- Admission of New Members to the United Nations
- Participants:
- Miss Barbara Salt, First Secretary, British Embassy
- Mr. Wainhouse—UNP
- Mr. Sale—EUR
- Mr. Taylor—UNP
- Mr. Jones—UNP
Miss Salt called upon Mr. Wainhouse on July 29, 1952 to discuss the United Nations Membership question. She recalled our earlier meeting on this subject of June 13, 1952 and asked whether the Department had any further views. She said that as far as she knew, the Foreign Office has not progressed in its thinking beyond the tentative opinions she had expressed to us earlier, but that it seemed to incline toward referring the question of the legality of the Soviet veto to the International Court of Justice.
Mr. Wainhouse assured Miss Salt that the Department has continued to give very detailed consideration to the membership problem. With respect to a package deal, France seemed cool on the idea and that China, Greece and Turkey might be expected to oppose it. While we have not reached any decision, we continued to see serious difficulties ourselves. Of the various possibilities, a comprehensive arrangement including the present applicants we favor and also Spain and Germany, which have not yet applied, would be the most satisfactory. However, even if we should be willing to consider this, there would be the practical difficulty that the more inclusive the arrangement, the less likely the USSR would accept it. When Miss Salt asked if it would be true to say that we were less inclined toward a package deal than when we met earlier, Mr. Wainhouse said that he thought that was correct, although we still had not reached a final decision.
Mr. Wainhouse said that we had again studied the veto problem in connection with membership and had concluded that there was no way we could legally circumvent a Soviet veto. Miss Salt expressed agreement, [Page 835] adding that the United Kingdom had always stressed that the Tripartite Delegation [Declaration]1 was not a commitment to get Italy admitted even if we had to act illegally.
On recourse to the Court, Mr. Wainhouse said that this was a possible alternative but he was not all optimistic about the result and thought that we could resort to it only as a holding operation. If the Foreign Office had drafted a text of a question to be put to the Court, we would be interested in seeing it. When Miss Salt asked if we had considered arrangements for non-member participation in the Assembly, Mr. Wainhouse said that we have studied this possibility but that apparently the Italians have no interest in this alternative.
We informed Miss Salt that the Italian Ambassador had called on; Mr. Hickerson on July 28 to discuss Italian membership; that the Ambassador had again stressed the importance which the Italian people attach to Italy’s admission and the desirability of its admission before-the Italian election takes place next year.
Miss Salt reviewed a conversation between Sir Gladwyn Jebb and. Ambassador Gross on the tactics we should follow on membership in the Security Council in September. She reported that they discussed the desirability of consultations among the permanent members during the latter part of August, during which we would inform the USSR that our position on a package deal remains unchanged; express our support for the new applicants, (Cambodia and Japan) and ask the USSR for its views on these applicants. When the Security Council meets on September 2 the permanent members would report that they had been unable to reach agreement, and we would request referral of the new applications to the Membership Committee for urgent action. We said we thought that this might be the general line to follow.
- Sept. 1951.↩