Canberra, 9 September 1971
4460. Secret
Chinese Representation
Ministers have now decided that we should inform the Americans that we agree in principle to join them in co–sponsoring their two resolutions on Chinese representation, that is, their IQ variation and their dual representation resolution with a reference to the Security Council seat. This agreement in principle would be subject to there being a large and representative group of countries which would also agree to co–sponsor. (For your own information only, we would need at some stage to define what we. mean by the ‘large and representative group’ and decide whether to go ahead with co–sponsorship given the co–sponsors available.) You could tell the Americans that we would be willing for them to indicate to potential co–sponsors that Australia would be willing to join a suitably large and representative group.
2. Beyond the above, Ministers would like to keep a maximum of flexibility, so that the Foreign Minister and delegation at the General Assembly can adapt their tactics as developments may make necessary to achieve our twin objectives of (1) entry of PRC, and (2) retention of membership for the ROC.
3. Within this general position of flexibility, we would like you to flag to the Americans the possibility of pursuing, at least as fall–back positions, two approaches which we have already adumbrated to you. The first of these is that, in certain circumstances, it may be desirable to seek separate votes on the two parts of the Albanian resolution (in particular so that our attitude and no doubt the attitude of other countries to the twin objectives given above may be explicitly manifested by our voting). The second possibility is that we might move amendments to the Albanian resolution which would remove the offending language from the AR and which would have the great advantage that, if the DR did not obtain precedence, voting on our amendments would have precedence over the original text of the AR. Without making these possibilities a condition of our agreement in principle to co–sponsor the American IQ and DR, we would like you again to draw these possibilities clearly to the attention of the Americans, within the general context that the United States, Australia and our friends should keep tactics carefully under review as we move to debate and finally to voting on the China item.
4. We are informing the American Embassy here, in response to their approach,1 in general terms along the lines of paragraph 1 above. We should be glad, however, if you would inform the Americans at a senior level in Washington in the more complete way outlined above.
For UN New York
Grateful if you would inform Bush along the lines of the above.
For Tokyo and Wellington
We shall be informing Nishida and Millen2 here of the above but should be grateful if you would also pass it on in Tokyo/Wellington at an appropriately senior level.
For Taipei
The above is, at the moment, for your information only.
We shall advise you later of any advice to be passed direct to the ROC.
[NAA: A6366, WH1971109–01T]
1 On 25 August, T.F. Conlon, the Political Counsellor of the US Embassy, Canberra, informed the Department of Foreign Affairs that he had been instructed to ascertain whether Australia would be willing to co–sponsor the two US draft resolutions on Chinese representation.
2 P.G. Millen, New Zealand Deputy High Commissioner in Canberra.