CFM Files
United States Delegation Minutes
USDel(PC)(PROC)5
[Dr. Evatt:] “The Committee could not advance a step if every time a proposal was made by one of the seventeen non-inviting nations their motives were questioned. The question of principle involved was the right of the Conference to select its own Chairman. M. Molotov had said that those who supported this principle were attempting to find a rift among the members of the Council of Foreign Ministers and to break down their decisions. Nothing of the kind was true. It was simply an attempt by the Conference to find its own expression and its own autonomy without being controlled in advance. The implications of M. Molotov’s statement should be recognized. His argument applied to every decision of the Council of Foreign Ministers. The other seventeen nations had come here to look at these treaties, not to act as rubber stamps. Would every proposal they made be denounced as an attempt to break the unity of the Four Great Powers? This Conference must retain its own dignity and exercise its own rights.”