501.BC/2–547: Telegram
The United States Representative at the United Nations (Austin) to the Secretary of State
us urgent
113. I am sending herewith a short summary of the position at the end of today’s meeting of the Security Council’s subcommittee to draft a resolution regarding the reduction of armaments with my comments. The subcommittee met all day and will meet again Thursday morning at eleven. There were four issues dealt, with at the meeting.
First is whether the United States proposal for a committee should be adopted. It is clear that the members of the subcommittee other than ourselves are unsympathetic to our suggestion for a committee of the whole, and feel that it is unnecessary and will cause delay. We urged [Page 397] the importance of preparing careful terms of reference to protect Atomic Energy Commission and the necessity of defining what are conventional weapons as opposed to weapons of mass destruction, but various members suggested that this task should be done either by the Council or perhaps by the new commission itself.
The Belgian chairman put forward the following suggestion in an effort at compromise:
“The commission shall submit its plan of work to the Council for approval and shall propose measures to be taken in order to prevent any encroachment on the competence of the AEC.” The chairman indicated one measure would be to propose delimitation of conventional weapons. I indicated we would consider this and advise the Council tomorrow as to our views.
I do not feel that the subcommittee will support our suggestion for a committee of the whole and under the circumstances consider that it might be advisable to accept the Belgian’s suggestion. In essence it merely postpones until later a Council decision as to the exact boundaries of the jurisdiction of the new commission. It has the advantage from our point of view of placing first on the agenda of the new commission a subject which will undoubtedly require some time to dispose of. Gromyko objected to this proposal on that ground and said he could not accept it. Furthermore, the representatives on the commission would probably be exactly the same as the representatives on our proposed committee of the whole and, therefore, the resulting recommendation should be the same. The recommendation is, of course, subject to the final approval of the Security Council itself and perhaps the General Assembly.
Second controversial point was whether we should include a specific statement in any resolution to the effect that the new commission had no jurisdiction over matters which fall within the competence of the AEC. We pressed hard on this point, and as the meeting dragged on and Gromyko continued to oppose any such provision on the sole ground that it was unnecessary and repetitive, other members of the subcommittee became suspicious and, I believe, came around to our point of view that it was absolutely essential. At the end, I made our position absolutely clear that we would not approve any resolution unless it contained a clear provision establishing this principle.
In my opinion the subcommittee will now support us on this point and I feel sure that most of the members of the Council will also do so.
Third question related to when we should deal with the AEC report. Gromyko suggested that if item three were included in the terms of reference of the new commission we would then proceed immediately from the present item on the agenda to a discussion of the AEC report. We agreed to his suggestion and the subcommittee seems to be in [Page 398] accord. I submitted the following language: “The terms of reference of the commission shall also include appropriate provisions for the implementation of the General Assembly resolution of December 14, 1946, relating to information on the armed forces of the United Nations insofar as that resolution relates to armaments within the new commission’s juridiction.” Gromyko never agreed to this language and appeared to back away from the whole proposal as soon as I submitted it.
Fourth question related to proposals to press for action by the Military Staff Committee on Article 43 agreements. It was agreed that the French would submit a new draft of their proposal for consideration tomorrow to the general effect that the Military Staff Committee will be called upon to submit a report on this question as soon as possible.
The committee ended up by attempting to reach agreement by using the French resolution1 as a basic text. My following telegram will report more in detail on the textual amendments suggested. The general tactical situation at the present moment is roughly as follows:
Because of Gromyko’s obstinate refusal to put into the record a statement that the new commission shall not infringe upon the competence of the ABC, the other members of the subcommittee have become increasingly suspicious of the Russians’ intention on this entire proposal for a commission. I assume this will apply to the other members of the Council if he maintains his position. I doubt if we have any real chance of obtaining our proposed committee of the whole to write terms of reference. I feel that the Belgian suggestion has a good deal of merit under the circumstances since, if we accept it, it provides us with an excellent opportunity to come out of the subcommittee with a resolution which will have the support of the majority of its members and probably the large majority of the Council, with the Russians being in an untenable position if they do not come along. Furthermore, if this course were followed, I feel we would in essence be getting what we really want, namely, an opportunity to prepare careful terms of reference which would make certain that there was no infringement by the new commission on the field of competence of the ABC.
I suggest, therefore, that we should accept the French text as the basis for a compromise resolution; insist on inserting a provision protecting the AEC competence; accept the Belgium proposal referred to above; and attempt to add to this resolution any other provisions which we feel are essential.
- SC, 2nd yr. Suppl. No. 2, pp. 33–34.↩