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

UNP files, lot 59 D 237, “Membership”

Memorandum Prepared in the Office of United Nations Political and Security Affairs¹

confidential

[Washington,] January 1953.

Admission of New Members

Background Paper²

General Background on Present Situation

Article 3 of the Charter provides that the original members of the United Nations are the states which, having participated in the San Francisco Conference or having signed the Declaration by United Nations of January 1, 1942, signed and ratified the Charter. There are fifty-one original members. These include the Soviet bloc of five.

The qualifications for new members and the procedures for their admission are governed by article 4, which reads as follows:

1. Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations.

2. The admission of any such state to membership in the United Nations will be effected by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.

The International Court of Justice has given two advisory opinions on article 4. In the first, it stated that a Member cannot subject its favorable vote on the admission of a state to the additional condition that other states be admitted simultaneously. In the second, the Court stated that the General Assembly cannot admit a state in the absence of a favorable Security Council recommendation. From the beginning a recommendation for the admission of a new member has been treated as a substantive question subject to the veto.

Only nine states have been admitted as new members since the founding of the Organization. These nine are: Afghanistan, Burma, Iceland, Indonesia, Israel, Pakistan, Sweden, Thailand, and Yemen. The last time that a state was admitted was in 1950, when Indonesia was accepted.

Nineteen other candidates have applied.^* The USSR has used its veto 28 times to block the admission of fourteen of these candidates (Austria, Cambodia, Ceylon, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Republic of Korea, Laos, Libya, Nepal, Portugal and Vietnam) all of which the Assembly has determined to be qualified. The remaining five, which are Soviet-sponsored (Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Rumania and Outer Mongolia) have never received the seven votes required for a Security Council recommendation or been found qualified by the Assembly.

The Soviet Union has proposed the simultaneous admission of nine of the non-Soviet applicants (including Austria, Ceylon, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Libya, Nepal and Portugal but omitting Cambodia, Japan, Republic of Korea, Laos and Vietnam) and of the five Soviet-sponsored candidates, always making clear, however, that it would continue to use its veto to block the admission of the non-Soviet applicants unless its own candidates were also admitted. The majority on the Security Council, including the United States, have not accepted this package deal. The membership question has therefore remained deadlocked, the Soviet Union vetoing the non-Soviet applicants and the majority rejecting the Soviet-sponsored candidates or a package deal.

Security Council and General Assembly Consideration of the Membership Problem in 1952

The Sixth General Assembly, on February 1, 1952, adopted a resolution recommending that the Security Council reconsider all pending applications and requesting that the permanent members confer with a view to assisting the Council to come to positive recommendations on these applications.

In accordance with the Assembly’s request, the permanent members met on August 21 to try to reach an agreement. However, no agreement was possible since the permanent members maintained their previous positions.

The Security Council considered the membership question from September 2 to September 19, 1952. The first item on the agenda was the Soviet proposal for the simultaneous admission of 14 applicants, including the 5 Soviet-sponsored candidates and 9 of the others. The USSR stated that this proposal offered the only solution and that the USSR was willing to continue to veto Italy and others until the Soviet-sponsored applicants were admitted. The Council rejected the Soviet proposal by a vote of 5 (Brazil, China, Greece, Netherlands and US) to 2 (Pakistan and USSR) with 4 abstentions (Chile, France, Turkey and UK). The U.S., in explaining its opposition to the Soviet proposal, said that each applicant was entitled to separate consideration on its own merits, and noted that the Soviet proposal omitted applicants which were qualified while it included 5 candidates which in the opinion of the U.S. did not fulfill Charter requirements.

The Council next considered 5 new applications which it had not previously examined separately. It had before it resolutions recommending the admission of Libya, submitted by Pakistan; of Japan, submitted by the U.S.; and of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, submitted by France. Subsequently, the USSR introduced a resolution recommending the admission of the Vietminh regime, which had sent a telegram purporting to be a membership application. The resolutions recommending the admission of Libya, Japan, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia received 10 favorable votes but were vetoed by the USSR, which stated that it was willing to include Libya in its package proposal but that it could not agree to the admission of Japan or the three Indo-China states. The Soviet resolution on the Vietminh regime was rejected by a vote of 10 to 1 (USSR). The U.S. and others maintained that this regime was not a state and that the so-called application need not even be considered.

The Ad Hoc Political Committee of the Seventh Assembly considered the membership problem from December 12 to December 19, 1952. At the initial meeting El Salvador submitted a resolution under which the Assembly would conclude that a recommendation to admit a new member was not subject to the veto; and would decide for or against the admission of the applicants which had received seven or more votes in the Council. At the same meeting Peru introduced a resolution under which the Assembly (1) would deduce that a Council recommendation on the admission of a new member was a procedural stage of the matter and was not subject to the veto, and that even if the veto did apply, it would be inadmissable when the member exercising the veto acknowledged that the applicant in question was qualified; (2) would note that the concurring opinions, votes and proposals laid before the Council showed that certain applicants were unanimously recognized as qualified; and (3) would, in view of these circumstances, consider the applications of the states concerned. According to this proposal, the Assembly could vote to admit any of the 9 non-Soviet applicants included in the Soviet proposal since each had received 7 or more favorable votes when considered separately by the Security Council and since the USSR, while voting against their individual admission, had approved of their admission by including them in its package proposal.

El Salvador introduced a second resolution on December 12 which would establish a Special Committee to make a detailed study of the membership problem and report its conclusions to the Eighth Session. The Committee, under the amended resolution, would be composed of representatives of the following states: Argentina, Belgium, Canada, China, Colombia, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Egypt, El Salvador, France, Greece, India, Lebanon, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Philippines, South Africa, UK, US, and USSR. On December 15, Peru and El Salvador suggested that priority be given to this proposal to establish a Special committee and that their substantive proposals not be put to the vote but be referred to the Committee.

Poland, on December 13, introduced a resolution recommending that the Security Council reconsider the applications of 14 candidates “in order to submit a recommendation on the simultaneous admission of all those states”. This proposal, like the Soviet proposal submitted to the Security Council in September, did not include Japan, the Re-public of Korea, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

During the debate on the various proposals, the members expressed deep concern over the continued stalemate, but there continued to be differences of opinion on the various solutions which had been offered. While some approved of Assembly action to admit the qualified applicants even without Security Council recommendations, a number of others, including the UK, contended that the veto did apply to membership applications and that this approach was therefore illegal. The Polish package proposal received some support but less than the same proposal received at the last Assembly. The fact that Japan had recently applied but was not included in the “package deal”, plus the fact that a proposal had been made to establish a Special Committee probably accounted for the decrease in support for the Polish proposal.

There was wide agreement, outside the Soviet bloc, that it would be desirable to have a Committee study the membership problem, and the resolution establishing the Committee was approved by the Ad Hoc Political Committee and later by the Assembly. The plenary vote was 48 to 5 (Soviet bloc) with 6 abstentions. (Before the vote the President of the Assembly announced that India, Czechoslovakia and the USSR would be deleted from the list of countries to serve on the Committee since they had stated that they did not wish to participate.) With respect to the Polish resolution calling for a Security Council “recommendation on the simultaneous admission” of 14 candidates, a move to delete the word “simultaneous” carried in both the Committee and the Plenary. The revised resolution was rejected by a vote of 28 (US) to 20 with 11 abstentions in the Committee and by a vote of 30 (US) to 9 with 10 abstentions in the plenary. The Soviet bloc itself voted against the resolution in the plenary on the grounds that the deletion of the word “simultaneous” changed its meaning.

In addition to establishing a Special Committee, the Assembly approved a US resolution determining that Japan met the qualifications and should be admitted and requesting that the Security Council take note of this determination. Similar resolutions endorsing Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Libya and Jordan were also adopted.

Senator Wiley, speaking for the US on the membership problem, reiterated our support for the admission of the 14 qualified candidates. He deplored the fact that the USSR has used its veto 28 times to block their admission and described the Soviet package deal as an “attempt at hold-up.” In explaining our objections to the Soviet-sponsored applicants, he noted that they were giving at least moral support to Communist aggression in Korea. He recalled that Albania, Bulgaria, Rumania, and Hungary had defied the Assembly’s efforts to end the guerrilla war in Greece and declared that they were waging a war of nerves against Yugoslavia and had molested foreign diplomats and imprisoned foreign citizens on false charges. We pointed out that Bulgaria, Hungary and Rumania had violated the human rights provisions of the peace treaties. We noted that one of the applicants, Outer Mongolia, had never demonstrated the slightest capacity to play the normal role of a state. With respect to the various proposals which had been suggested as possible solutions to the membership problem, Senator Wiley stated that some of them raised grave constitutional issues, and he favored the establishment of a Special Committee which could give an unhurried exploration to the problem.

Action Required This Year

In view of the urgency of the admission of the qualified states, the Department of State has given careful consideration to possible ways to break the deadlock. We have considered proposals to circumvent the Soviet veto but have believed that these proposals were illegal under the Charter and could lead to a gradual whittling away of the veto power on other matters of vital concern to us. We have also examined the feasiblity of a political settlement among the Big Five under which we could obtain the admission of more of the states we favor than the 9 included in the Soviet package proposal. However, we have been unwilling to seek such a settlement which would necessarily involve our acquiescene in the admission of some or all of the Soviet-sponsored applicants.

It is expected that there will be strong pressure for a solution to the membership problem this year. The Members of the United Nations have become increasingly concerned over the stalemate, and countries like Italy and Japan attach great importance to United Nations membership. The establishment of a Special Committee resulted in postponement of a decision on the problem but should not be interpreted as a desire on the part of the Members to bury the issue. The United States approached the Central American countries to sponsor the proposal for the creation of the Committee in order to head off support for proposals unacceptable to us and in order to give the new Administration an opportunity to review the problem.

Among the proposals which the Committee will probably study and on which we will have to take a position are the following:

a. Latin American proposals recommending direct Assembly action to admit qualified applicants excluded by the Soviet veto.

b. Proposal to refer to the International Court of Justice the question as to whether the veto is applicable to membership applications or as to whether a negative vote of a permanent member cast on non-Charter grounds can nullify a recommendation which has obtained seven or more votes.

c. Soviet proposal recommending the simultaneous admission of 14 applicants.

d. Proposal endorsing the principle of a universal membership and recommending the admission of all applicant states.

e. Proposal recommending an amendment to article 4 of the Charter to remove the qualifications for membership and/or to eliminate the veto from votes on membership applications.

f. Proposal to give non-Members considered qualified for admission the right to participate in the Assembly without vote pending a solution to the problem.

We hope that the Special Committee will not be organized until after the closing of the reconvened seventh session, and have so indicated to the Secretariat.

1. The date is handwritten in the upper right corner simply as “Jan ‘53”.
2. The paper was prepared presumably for the briefing of Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., appointed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower as the U.S. Representative to the United Nations, in the new Eisenhower Administration. Lodge was present at the Department of State for briefings on Jan. 22, but the membership problem of the United Nations was not included in a schedule for briefings drawn up on Jan. 19 nor was this paper one of several attached to this briefing schedule (memorandum, schedule of briefing meetings for Ambassador Lodge on Thursday, Jan. 22, 1953, Jan. 19, 1953, Hickerson–Murphy–Key files, lot 58 D 33, “Ambassador Lodge”). No records of the Jan. 22 meetings have been found in the Department of State files; but there is evidence that at some time on that date the membership question was discussed between Lodge and Departmental officers.
3. In addition to these nineteen, the North Korean and Vietminh regimes have submitted communications purporting to be membership applications. [Footnote in the source text.]