UNP files, lot 59 D 237, “Membership”
Memorandum by the Director of the Office of United Nations Political and Security Affairs (Wainhouse) to the Deputy United States Representative at the United Nations (Wadsworth)1
- Subject:
- Objectives and Work Program of Special Membership Committee
The following are the Department’s views on the objectives of the Special Membership Committee and on the organization of its work. We hope that advance agreement can be reached on these matters with Committee Members so that at the outset the Commitee will decide upon a suitable work program.
[Page 945]The main purpose of the Committee should be to develop the various alternative approaches to the membership question in concrete enough form so that the Assembly could, if desirable, make use of them in the fall. The Committee should, insofar as practicable, avoid consideration of the qualifications of individual applicants and confine its study to the larger aspects of the entire problem. It should preferably not make specific recommendations for a particular course of action or vote on individual proposals, but should examine all proposals offered as solutions and report to the Assembly the arguments for and against each of them. In other words, its objective should be a thorough analysis of all proposed solutions which would assist the Assembly to reach a decision.
The proposals which the Committee will probably consider fall into several categories. In one category are proposals regarding admission procedures, such as the Assembly’s previous recommendation that the Big Five agree among themselves not to veto membership applications, and various Latin American proposals calling for independent Assembly action to admit applicants which have been vetoed by the Soviet Union. In a second category are proposals regarding the application of the criteria of Article 4, such as the Peruvian resolution adopted by the Sixth Session, suggestions for a universal membership and the Soviet proposal for simultaneous admission of applicants. Under a third category is the suggestion for non-voting participation in the Assembly for non-Member states, such as the proposal submitted to the Assembly by El Salvador in 1950.
Under our conception of the Committee’s objectives, it would report on all of these approaches. Although we could not support the various Latin American proposals for Assembly action to admit applicants and would have to express our strong doubts as to their legality, the promotion of them by the Latin Americans would point up the responsibility of the Soviet veto for the frustration of the membership question and might have a useful effect upon the Soviet Union. From this point of view it would be desirable that statements of these proposals be included in the Committee’s report even though the majority could not endorse them. Similarly, while we could not support the principle of absolute universality or an application of Article 4 based on this principle, for your information we might at some time in the future have to accept this approach should we decide to seek an omnibus settlement. It may therefore be found desirable for the Committee to state this approach as well as the application of Article 4 which the United States and the majority have thus far favored. Finally, we believe it would be advantageous for the Committee to give some consideration to the question of non-voting participation in the Assembly for non-Member states. Even though we have not decided to press for this alternative to membership in view of the negative reaction of [Page 946] Italy, and should make this point clear to the British and others, we believe we should utilize the occasion for developing this possibility should we decide to move ahead on this basis in the future and in order to strengthen our position against the Soviet Union on the membership question.
If agreement can be reached on the over-all objective of the Committee, it could then proceed to reach decisions on its work program which would achieve this objective. In our view the best procedure might be for the Committee to ask the Chairman and Rapporteur to prepare an agenda listing the various proposals which the Committee would analyse. These would include the major proposals discussed in the Secretariat paper on the historical background of the membership question as well as any new proposals which might be introduced. The proposals might be organized on the basis of the categories mentioned above. In order to limit the debate and minimize pressure by individuals for Committee approval of specific proposals, the Members might be requested to give their views on all proposals within one category by a single statement. At the end of the Committee’s discussion, the Rapporteur would prepare a report containing a clear statement of the proposals considered and a summary of the views expressed on each.
- Drafted by the Officer in Charge, General Assembly Affairs (Taylor), and cleared in draft with the geographic bureaus and L/UNA.↩