Office of the Historian

310.2/8–2753

Memorandum of Conversation, by the Officer in Charge of General Assembly Affairs (Taylor)1

confidential
[Washington,] August 27, 1953.
  • Subject:
  • General Assembly Matters: UN Membership
  • Participants:
  • Miss Barbara Salt, First Secretary, British Embassy
  • Mr. Paul B. Taylor, UNP
  • Mr. Eric Stein, UNP

Miss Salt came at her request for a general discussion of problems to be expected at the Eighth General Assembly. In particular, she was under instructions to raise the question of United Nations membership.

1. Membership

As to membership, the foreign office had begun to study the problem for this year. They were inclined to think the issue should not be agitated this year and, in particular, they were especially concerned that no impairment of the veto take place through one or another of the Latin American proposals which have been before the United Nations in the past several years. Although the foreign office thinking is not final as yet, they are, as last year, inclined to think that if there is strong pressure for a Latin American proposal, the best course would be to submit it to the International Court on some agreed formulation. She was inclined to favor a formulation that would clearly result in a negative opinion by the Court. She said it is the view of the foreign office that the Chinese representation problem is in its nature, and must be completely separate from the membership problem. She asked whether we felt there was a relationship between the two matters. I said that, speaking personally, it seemed to me there was a connection in that if the Soviet Union were ever to go so far as to agree to a complete “package” of new members, it would be likely to put Communist China into the package as well. I told her we were just now formulating [Page 962] our position on the membership question and would inform her when a decision had been reached.

[Here follows discussion of the Chinese representation question; see page 690. There was discussion also of “Miscellaneous Items”.]

Paul B. Taylor
  1. Source text indicates this memorandum was dictated Aug. 26.↩