Canberra, 30 July 1971
Secret
Your Cables 573 and 568.1
China
Particularly until Ministers have considered how to handle matters at UN, you should give no encouragement to any view McConaughy may hold that Australia might be prepared to play a vanguard role at the UN in advocacy of the PRC’s accession to the Security Council and/or in defence of the ROC’s seat in the General Assembly.
2. At the officials’ talks with the Japanese earlier this week, there was an identity of view that we would not usefully proceed further in refinement of our own positions on UN tactics pending the ROC’s response to the American enquiry and determination of the American position in the light of that response. Without active US support, neither we nor the Japanese have the influence at the UN to be able to ensure adoption of any course we might favour.
3. For similar reasons, we do not wish to inject any further ideas to the ROC on this matter at present. As you know, the US for its part states that it is waiting for a reply from the ROC before it takes a decision on UN tactics on Chinese representation. You will also bear in mind that we have for many months been seeking to influence the US to give a clear lead on the UN representation issue, and that we ourselves have thought that the approach should be to provide for the admission of the PRC to the United Nations and allocation to it of the Security Council seat while seeking to retain membership of the United Nations for the ROC. This position has been stated publicly by the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister.
[NAA: A1838, 3107/38/18, xvii]
1 29 and 28 July. In Cablegram 568, Dunn gave his opinion that any specific ideas on the UN representation issue that ‘we could inject informally’ in Taipei would be welcome and could have ’some effect’. Cablegram 573 related to Dunn’s discussion with McConaughy, as referred to in paragraph 1 above.