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Australian Delegation, United Nations, to Department of External Affairs

Cablegram UN685 NEW YORK, 12 November 1946, 11.28 p.m.

SECRET

Assembly 143.

Admission of New Members.

1. Debate on the Australian resolution in terms of paragraph 2A of Assembly 65 [1] was concluded.

2. Support was achieved from Greece, Colombia, Lebanon and Uruguay.

3. Belgium, Chile, Venezuela and Liberia supported the first paragraph only.

4. Opposition to the whole resolution was expressed by Byelo- Russia, China, U.S.S.R., France, United Kingdom, Nor-way, United States and Denmark.

5. The United Kingdom and United States among others opposed resolution on the grounds that second portion of proposal would in effect amend Charter.

6. As it was obvious that original resolution would be rejected we decided to obtain as much as possible by as large a majority as possible and after explaining that our objective was to harmonise different views to the satisfaction of both organisations and, while maintaining that our own interpretation was well founded, we reduced the resolution to a simple proposal for further study and pressed for an immediate vote.

This move succeeded and the Committee adopted the following text by twenty-nine to nine with six abstentions-‘The General Assembly requests the Security Council to appoint a Committee to confer with a Committee on procedures of the General Assembly with a view to preparing rules governing the admission of new members which will be acceptable both to the General Assembly and to the Security Council’. [2] The minority was composed of U.S.S.R. and satellites and United States.

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1 Document 188.

2 This resolution (Resolution 36(1)), and another recommending that the Security Council re-examine the applications for membership of Albania, Mongolia, Transjordan, Ireland and Portugal ‘in accordance with Article 4’ of the U.N. Charter (Resolution 35(1)), were adopted in plenary session by the General Assembly on 19 November.

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[AA:A838/2, 852/10/3, i]