Editorial Note
At two meetings on September 9 the Security Council addressed itself again to the question of the 12 applicants for admission to the United Nations (the seven Argentine resolutions and the Soviet resolution), with these new developments. The Soviet Union submitted a revision of its original resolution of June 21, re-ordering the listing of the applicants so as to be on a chronological basis according to date of application (now reading Albania, the Mongolian Peoples’ Republic, Jordan (Trans-Jordan), Portugal, Ireland, Hungary, Italy, Austria, Rumania, Bulgaria, Finland, and Ceylon, and adding for the first time Nepal) (for text, see SC, 4th yr., No. 40, page 8). Following this, the United States invoked its procedural motion made at the June 21 meeting (see footnote 1, page 293), which provided that a separate vote be taken on each applicant named should the Soviet Union insist on consideration of its draft resolution by a vote (SC, 4th No. 40, page 10).
On September 13 the Soviet Representative (Tsarapkin) withdrew his amended resolution of September 9 and resubmitted the original Soviet resolution of June 21, but adding Nepal; the effect of this was to re-list the applicants as Albania, The Mongolian Peoples’ Republic, Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary, Finland, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, Jordan, Austria, Ceylon, and Nepal (ibid., No. 41, page 4). The Security Council then proceeded, amidst complicated parliamentary maneuvering, to consider and finally to vote on the seven Argentine resolutions providing for the admission, on an individual basis, of Portugal, Jordan, Italy, Finland, Ireland, Austria, and Ceylon, in that order. In the voting that ensued all applicants received seven or more affirmative votes, but the Security Council failed to take favorable action because of the negative vote of a permanent member (the Soviet Union) (ibid., pages 28 ff.).
In two meetings on September 15, again in a tangled parliamentary setting, the Security Council rejected proposals for the admission of the 13 applicants named in the Soviet resolution. This was done in the first instance by voting on each individual applicant, on the basis of [Page 301] the procedural motion made by the United States Representative (see SC, 4th yr., No. 42, pages 3 ff., particularly pages 3, 21, 23, 25, 31, and 40–42); in fact only the first five applicants named—the “satellites”—were voted upon, the others being passed over by means of a paraliamentary tactic because of their recent rejection (September 13) by the Soviet Union. The Soviet resolution, calling for en bloc admission of the 13 states, was then put to a vote and defeated 4–2–4 (one member not voting), the United States being one of those that abstained (ibid., page 45). This ended Security Council consideration of the membership question in 1949.