Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, United Nations Affairs, Volume III

330/3–2654: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Mission at the United Nations¹

confidential

Washington, April 5, 1954—6:02 p.m.

463. Re SC Elections (urtel 559).²

1. Department agrees you can inform Belgians we definitely will support their election to SC if they become candidate for European seat. Assume Belgium already aware of this (urtel 537 and second approach to Belgians suggested Deptel 456). While we cannot guarantee future Belgian position on Chinese representation, it is certainly safer than that of Sweden (or other Scandinavians) and as safe as that of other Western European members.

2. We agree you can also tell UK we will definitely support Belgium if it runs. Re (A) and (B) of urtel, seems to us it would be preferable tell UK we are anxious avoid differences with our allies on European seat and consequently hope Sweden will not run because its candidacy would present very serious difficulties for us and to say we are not at all sure we could support Sweden without, however, indicating definite decision. Objective in talking UK should be get them take lead in developing Western European support for Belgium so that there can be unified West position on a candidate all of us can definitely support. We believe kind of approach suggested above would be as successful if not more successful way of achieving this objective. Furthermore if we informed UK we could not support Sweden even if it is European candidate and might have to vote for non-European, and if others including Sweden heard of this, this would cause deep resentment and could have unfortunate effects on our relationships in UN with Europeans.

Dulles

1. Drafted by Paul W. Jones of the Office of UN Political and Security Affairs and concurred in by Paul B. Taylor, Officer in Charge of General Assembly Affairs; cleared with the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for UN Affairs (Wainhouse) and the Bureaus of European Affairs, and Far Eastern Affairs; approved for transmission by the Acting Director of the Office of UN Political and Security Affairs(Popper); signed by the Deputy Under Secretary of State (Murphy).
2. Not printed (330/4–154).