Cablegram [UNY]477 CANBERRA, 9 December 1946
MOST IMMEDIATE
Your U.N.941. [1] This threatened exercise of the veto in a field in which no such privilege exists is indefensible. To begin with, the threat should not be taken seriously. If the Assembly were to be in any way influenced by the Soviet threat of withdrawal in this instance, the same threat would be used in other matters in which the Soviet view was not accepted. You should strongly support the case for San Francisco and in fact in the light of this threat there should be increased rather than decreased support from other members. [2]
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1 Dispatched 7 December. In it Makin reported that the U.S.S.R.
had threatened to withdraw from the United Nations if its headquarters were established at San Francisco, and that the United States had subsequently indicated its support for an East Coast site.
2 In plenary session of 14 December the General Assembly resolved that the permanent site for the headquarters of the United Nations would be at Manhattan (Resolution 100(I)).
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[AA:A3196, 1946, 0.23087]