44. Minutes of the Fourth Meeting of the Delegation to the Eleventh Session of the General Assembly, Mission Headquarters, New York, November 22, 1956, 9:30 a.m.1
Ambassador Lodge opened the meeting and gave the floor to Miss Gough who announced the schedule for the day. The general debate would be resumed and in the afternoon; the Secretary General might deliver his Middle East report to the General Assembly. If not, the general debate would continue. Mr. Barco pointed to the possible need for us to make a statement when the Secretary General delivers his report. In such a statement it might be desirable to give an expression of our support and adherence to the Secretary General’s report.
Ambassador Lodge told the Delegation that he had been in Washington yesterday and had brought back the President’s best wishes to the members of the Delegation. The President had been most emphatic about the need for the British and French to get out of Egypt immediately.
Mr. Bender made the presentation on the matter of the United Nations scale of assessments. Mr. Bender’s remarks referred to the discussion paper which had been distributed to the meeting as Document US/A/3764 dated November 21, 1956. The principal issue was how the percentage contributions of the sixteen new members should be distributed among the sixty “old” members in the light of the Contributions Committee report recommending reductions for all significant contributors except the U.S. The U.S. position was to have the new members’ contribution treated as miscellaneous income this year, and to obtain a subsequent revision in the scale of assessments which would bring our share down to about 30%.
Mr. Fobes suggested that if the Secretary General asks for an advance contribution to the costs of the United Nations Expeditionary [Page 142] Force our problem in putting across the U.S. position on assessment would be much more difficult. Mr. Fobes had already had some questions—some countries were asking whether our stand on the Committee report would have any bearing on our contributions to U.N. voluntary programs.
Ambassador Jones2 reported that his staff had surveyed the attitudes of other members of the Fifth Committee. The best we could expect would be that revision be delayed for another year. There should be a better chance of reducing the U.S. contribution next year.
Ambassador Lodge related that when Senator Vandenberg3 was a member of the U.S. Delegation serving on the Fifth Committee, he had told Mr. Lodge that the “capacity-to-pay” concept had been authored by Mr. Paul Appleby, a U.S. national in the Secretariat. Senator Vandenberg had found himself confronted by a formula whereby the United States would pay one-half the costs. In Senator Vandenberg’s view, this had caused the U.S. a disconcerting loss of bargaining power. Mr. Vandenberg had finally been able to maintain the position which is still the basis of the U.S. Delegation’s stand today. On the size of the U.S. contribution, Ambassador Lodge had originally opposed going below the one-third point because there was a certain psychology in our contributing one-third. He now questioned, however, how we could accept the Soviet’s getting a reduction and the U.S. not. He wondered whether we could settle at 31%.
Mr. Bender interpolated that with the election of Japan the total share of new members would be brought to something over 9%. Giving us the benefit of ⅓ of this would result in our assessment coming down to 30%. Senator Knowland4 reported that the sentiment in Congress was that the U.S. share should be closer to 25%. He felt there would be great resistance to the U.S. not getting a fair share of the reduction. Senator Knowland felt that we all had a job to educate our colleagues in the United Nations, on the nature of our separation of powers, that the Executive branch could not commit the Legislative to any given figure, and therefore that the United States could not be assessed. Only the Congress could appropriate funds. Perhaps we ought to put in our committee statement a disclaimer that any assessment of the United States out of our treasury was automatic. In this context it was well to [Page 143] remember that we contributed in Korea 90% of the resources and something like 90% of the manpower.
Mr. Greenbaum5 thought it was not wise to quote a specific figure of 30%. Why not simply give notice that we were seeking a “reduction”? It would be better not to mention the amount, thereby leaving us maximum flexibility. Ambassador Lodge felt that if we said 30% it did not foreclose our going below that figure. Mr. Fobes cited the exact language of the Department’s instructions to the effect that the 30% level would be one of the alternatives and the one for which we would press.
Ambassador Lodge requested Ambassador Jones to draw up a careful statement for the benefit of the other members of the Committee explaining how the United States constitutional system works, emphasizing that the Congress is the only source of money. It should make clear the difference between our system and the parliamentary system where executive and legislative powers are commingled in the same people. Ambassador Lodge urged that Foreign Service Officers whether here or in the field also should undertake to explain how our appropriation system works. We were never committed to any amount until Congress actually appropriated the money. Ambassador Lodge felt that it would be a real injustice if the windfall coming from the admission of the 16 new members did not result in a reduction of our contribution. He had never regarded the “capacity-to-pay” formula as sacred at all, even though we were stuck with it. He urged Ambassador Jones to put the opponents of a U.S. reduction on the defensive.
Senator Knowland reiterated that the feeling in Congress was strong about assessments of the United States for international organizations. He recalled that last year the State Department had made some recommendations and that the Congress had over-turned them. Even though it was under a Republican Administration, the action of Congress had been thoroughly bipartisan. Ambassador Lodge thought that it was important in explaining our system, to demonstrate that when Congress reduced or disallowed a U.S. assessment, we had not “welched” on any agreement; it was simply the way our system worked.
The meeting adjourned at 9:55.
- Source: Department of State, IO Master Files, US/A/M(SR)/1—.Confidential Drafted on November 26.↩
- Richard Lee Jones, Ambassador to Liberia and Alternate Representative at the United Nations, 1956.↩
- Arthur H. Vandenberg (R–Mich.), 1928–1951.↩
- William F. Knowland (R–Calif.).↩
- Edward S. Greenbaum, lawyer, former army officer, and Special Assistant to the U.S. Attorney General (1938); Alternate Representative at the United Nations, 1956.↩