Washington, 2 June 1971
2940. Secret Priority
Chinese Representation
Marshall Green (Assistant Secretary of State) this morning saw the New Zealand Ambassador (Corner)1 and me. Winthrop Brown (Deputy Assistant Secretary of State) and Feldman (UN Division of the State Department) were also present.
2. Green and Brown said that President Nixon would later be answering Mr McMahon’s letter to him.2 The President accepted the view that past tactics could not succeed in the United Nations and he favoured the following approach. We would have a resolution put forward in the General Assembly which would (a) decide that the People’s Republic of China be seated as a member of the United Nations and (b) also decide (in the same resolution) that the Republic of China shall continue to be a member unless expelled by two-thirds. The resolution as put forward would be silent on membership of the Security Council. If questioned on that point the United States would say that membership of the Security Council was a matter for the Council itself and not the General Assembly, and the United States might suggest to questioners that the reaction of Peking to the General Assembly resolution be seen first. There is no view yet on who should actually put the resolution forward nor has an actual resolution yet been drafted.
3. The Secretary of State (Rogers) informed the Ambassador here of the Republic of China3 of the foregoing last Friday, 28th May. There has been no reaction yet from Taipei. The United States impression is that the ROC is much more flexible than was ever expected except on the question of membership of the Security Council. Indeed when Rogers mentioned the possibility of going on with the old tactics the Chinese Ambassador himself had ruled that out.
4. At the direction of the President, the Secretary of State will be informing certain NATO allies of the lines of the United States approach during the NATO conference at present taking place in Lisbon namely Belgium, Britain, France, Italy and Turkey. He will be informing the Foreign Minister of Japan (Aichi)4 in Paris at the end of this week. I suggested that Thanat5 of Thailand should also be brought into the picture since the talks are being widened as much as this.
5. Green concluded by saying that the President had not repeat not made a final decision. He was waiting to see reactions from the present soundings. Green did not know the reason for the President saying in his press conference last night (2nd June) that it would take approximately six weeks to decide what position the Government of the United States should take at the next session of the United Nations.
6. In the discussion and questioning that followed, Comer said that Sir Keith Holyoake had already committed himself in public to the thesis that if both Chinese Governments were seated in the United Nations, Peking should occupy the Security Council seat. Comer thought perhaps there was some leeway left for tactical manoeuvring and that New Zealand would not necessarily have to vote for a decision by the General Assembly on that point rather than leave it to the Security Council itself to decide. I said that Australia had publicly taken much the same position as New Zealand on the Council seat but that I thought we too had some tactical leeway.
7. The Americans said that their assessment was that there would be a simple majority for the proposed resolution and for each paragraph if it were voted on in parts. They considered that a simple majority would be sufficient to adopt the resolution. I raised some practical queries on that. I said that the General Assembly had year after year adopted a resolution sponsored by Australia and certain other countries which declared that any change in Chinese membership was an important question requiring a two-thirds majority. The new resolution involved a change in United Nations membership. In response to my observation the reaction of Green and the others was first that the General Assembly was not bound by resolutions of previous sessions on a procedural matter, and secondly that the political advantages outweighed any possible charges of being inconsistent. I said we had to bear in mind the fact that once we had ourselves overthrown the two-thirds principle there was a danger that the Albanian resolution or some more palatable variant would be carried. The Americans, however, seemed confident that if the resolution now proposed by the United States is introduced, the Albanian resolution would not be adopted.
8. We also had some discussion on a further possibility which I put forward namely that after the adoption of the resolution Peking would seek to be seated in the Security Council without having first expressed a position on the General Assembly resolution. I thought that in light of the resolution which the General Assembly would adopt the Security Council would seat Peking. Peking might then take its seat in any United Nations bodies of which the ROC was not a member but refuse to sit in any United Nations body where the ROC was seated. Peking might challenge the legality of the General Assembly resolution and, in the absence of any endorsement of that resolution by the Security Council (which nobody seemed to think was possible), it would be possible for a later session of the General Assembly to remove the Republic of China from membership by simply setting aside the resolution now under discussion.
9. The reaction of Marshall Green to the foregoing was that in his opinion Peking would not take its seat in the Security Council so long as the ROC was a member of the United Nations. I replied that I was not certain on that point. Marshall Green and the others further considered the possibility that if Peking did take the seat in the Security Council the ROC would walk out. The general view was that in that event our new resolution would lapse in one way or another if only because one set of credentials would be approved and no others.
10. I also raised the possibility of the legality of the proposed resolution being referred at some stage to the International Court of Justice, for example on the ground that what was being done was really the admission of a new member and that the Charter provisions for this had not been observed. It could also be argued before the Court that the unseating of the ROC was not the ‘expulsion of a member’ but simply a change in the representation of an existing member. Green thought that if this question was referred by a competent organ to the International Court of Justice the Court would take a long time to make a decision and that further political developments could occur in the meantime.
11. The proposed United States resolution does not define the territorial authority of either Peking or the ROC. This is deliberate.
12. Green stressed the need for keeping all this very confidential. He indicated that the United States was talking more frankly and in more detail to Australia and New Zealand then it would be talking to other countries.
Plimsoll
[NAA: A6364, WH1971/05-02]
1 F.H. Corner, New Zealand Ambassador to the United States.
2 See Document 181.
3 James C.H. Shen.
4 Aichi Kiichi.
5 Thanat Khoman, Thai Minister of Foreign Affairs.