320. Memorandum From the Head of the Delegation to the Conference on Antarctica (Phleger) to the Deputy Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (Merchant)1
A meeting of the Heads of Delegations was held at 3 o’clock this afternoon.
The Soviet representative said he had no instructions yet on the Article on nuclear explosions.
The question of accession was then brought up and I stated the U.S. position was that accession should be open to UN members and members of UN specialized agencies and we were willing to add that accession would be open to states invited by unanimous vote of the Article VIII parties.
The U.S.S.R. then stated its position that it would not agree to any formula that would include UN specialized agencies, stating that this formula discriminated against socialist states. Then South Africa, Chile, Australia, and New Zealand made statements which indicated that while they did not like the Soviet formula they would, nevertheless, accept it, stating that what it really meant was a postponement of the final decision regarding accession, leaving it to unanimous agreement of the contracting parties. France, in a private note, stated that it was authorized to accept the Soviet proposal if the U.S. accepted it. Argentina supported the U.S. position, and stated that to drop the specialized agencies would be a bad precedent.
The Soviet Union said that dropping the specialized agencies would not be a precedent of any kind for this treaty relates only to Antarctica and is not a United Nations treaty. He pointed out that there were numerous conventions, such as the Geneva convention of [Page 626] 1949 that had no provision regarding specialized agencies and concluded that the Soviet had made its proposal in a spirit of compromise and that its real proposal was that accession be open to all nations.
After some further discussion the meeting adjourned until 10:00 A.M. on Monday.
- Source: Department of State, Central Files, 702.022/11–2059. Confidential. Drafted by Phleger. A note on the source text indicates that a copy of the memorandum was delivered to the Secretary of State at 6:30 p.m. on November 20.↩