UNP files, lot 59 D 237, “Membership”
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Director of the Office of British Commonwealth and Northern European Affairs (Raynor)
- Subject:
- Irish Application for Membership in United Nations
- Participants:
- Mr. Sean Lemass, Deputy Prime Minister of Ireland
- Ambassador Nearne, Embassy of Ireland
- Mr. Sean Leydon, Secretary of Industry and Commerce
- The Secretary
- Mr. Hayden Raynor, Director, BNA
In the course of a courtesy call today following the conclusion of a general discussion on world-wide trouble spots, Mr. Lemass inquired as to the status of the membership question in the United Nations and specifically with respect to the long pending Irish application for membership.
The Secretary replied that he could see one of two alternatives possibly leading to a solution in this question. The first would be to work out some kind of arrangement by which applicants which were able to obtain a two-thirds vote in the General Assembly would be afforded the right of participation in the deliberations of that body. He pointed out that, of course, the Assembly under present circumstances was, of course, the important body. He said while certain corners might have to be cut to achieve this kind of solution, he thought it might be possible. The other alternative he said would involve amending, presumably at the Charter revision conference in 1955, the provisions on membership. He said, of course theoretically the Soviets had a veto even on the question of amendments.
In reply to Mr. Lemass’ specific inquiry the Secretary expressed the view that a package proposal for admitting applicants en masse was not feasible at this time in view of the character of some of the applicants. He said while we, for instance, might not have too much difficulty with an applicant such as Rumania, when it came to applicants such as Outer Mongolia and Albania it was quite another matter. He also said that it would be inevitable that the Russians in some way would tie in Red China to any package proposal and we just did not think that events today would indicate that Red China deserved membership. For all of these reasons he thought the idea of package admission was not possible today.
[Page 979]Note: After leaving the Secretary’s office Mr. Lemass commented to Mr. Raynor that there was some feeling in Ireland that the Irish application should be withdrawn but the position of the government was to permit it to remain on file, so to speak, as it has for the last several years.