New York, 2 August 1971
UN567. Secret Immediate
Chinese Representation
Your 761.1
I propose to go to Washington tomorrow, 3rd August, as planned.
2. Meanwhile United States Mission here is moving swiftly following release of Rogers’s statement at mid-day today. Bush2 has returned here this afternoon from meeting with Rogers and others this morning and has brought with him two draft resolutions—a very short and simple IQ and a longer DR—for early discussion with representatives here of like-minded governments. (Texts in my following telegram.)3
2. Bush has instructed that copies of texts be given first to Australian, New Zealand, Japanese and ROC representatives (the other three will get theirs tomorrow morning) and is setting up a meeting of eighteen countries for tomorrow afternoon to have a first look at the texts and discuss possible tactics. He is anxious for me to be there, but I am inclined to think that I can more usefully talk with the State Department than attend a discussion which will probably be fairly diffuse at this early stage.
3. It would of course be valuable if we could have even your initial comments on the draft texts in Washington tomorrow morning. Having received copies only late today I have not had time to consider them in detail alongside your own parallel drafts,4 but I commented to the United States Mission:
(I) Absence from DR of any mention of Security Council, to which the reply was that it had been thought desirable to omit this to propitiate the ROC, but that its ultimate inclusion was by no means ruled out.
(II) Reference to ‘Republic of China’ and not simply ‘China’ in fourth preambular paragraph of DR, which Mission thought could be changed if necessary.
(III)Tendency to clutter up the DR with clauses of doubtful utility or clarity, e.g. preambular paragraphs 6 and 7 and operative paragraph 3.
5. Canberra please repeat as desired.
1 2 August. It communicated the text of Document 225 and the assumption in Canberra that the meeting suggested by the United States to take place in New York on the text of the proposed UN resolutions and tactics in the UN General Assembly would follow bilateral discussions scheduled to take place in Washington.
2 George Bush, Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations, New York.
3 Document 227.
4 Officials in Canberra had constructed two draft resolutions. They had no status as texts approved by the Government but had been drafted by officials only for exploratory consideration and for discussion, without commitment, with officials of friendly Governments, that is, the United States, Japan and New Zealand. The first, a non-expulsion motion, noted that the ROC was an original member of the United Nations and that a member could only be expelled, under Article 6 of the Charter, after persistent violations of the Charter’s principles. It also recognised that expulsion required a two-thirds majority and, by its operative paragraph, affirmed that any question of the expulsion of the ROC was indeed an important question. The second draft resolution, a substantive one, invited the PRC as a member of the United Nations, to take its seat in the Organization and decided that it was one of the permanent members of the United Nations.