power to command under article 7. A number of these cases have already been referred to in the course of the general debate, and I shall refer only to one of those which has been mentioned before, namely, the case of Franco Spain.

I recall, that in April 1946, the Polish delegation brought to the Security Council a complaint against the activities of Franco Spain on the ground that the regime endangered international peace and security. The Polish delegation then demanded that the Security Council vote to require the members of the United Nations to invoke one of the sanctions mentioned in chapter VII, namely, "the severance of diplomatic relations." That proposal failed in the Security Council, and then what happened. Immediately the Polish delegation brought its proposal to the General Assembly, and asked the Assembly to recommend the imposition of the sanctions that the Security Council had refused to command. It introduced the proposal that the General Assembly should recommend to the members that they should break off diplomatic_relations with the Spanish Government. The delegation of the Byelorussian S.S.R. went a step further, and urged that the Assembly should recommend to its members that they impose economic sanctions upon the Franco regime.

Both of those proposals were supported wholeheartedly and vigorously by the representative of the Soviet Union. I recall that Mr. Gromyko then said to us in reference to these proposals, particularly the Polish proposal:

It had been claimed in the Security Council that the General Assembly should take action, but now it was being stated in the General Assembly that the matter was within the competence of the Security Council.

Then Mr. Gromyko went on to say:

The General Assembly had the power and the right to consider and take a decision on this problem, and a policy of inaction would have grave consequences. 2 Only a few days ago, the Soviet Union brought to this Assembly, although the Security Council is concurrently sitting right across the hall, an agenda item entitled "American aggression against China." The explanatory memorandum, document A/1382, refers to a series of alleged acts which it said constitute a serious threat to international peace and security and call for immediate action by the United Nations.

That is, as I say, a proposal brought by the Soviet Union to the General Assembly when the Security Council is sitting a few feet away across the hall. Apparently, it is the view of the Soviet Union delegation that the General Assembly does have power to recommend action by member states when that action is in the interests of the

For a summary of the Spanish case, see The United States and the United Nations: Report by the President to the Congress for the Year 1946 (Department of State publication 2735; 1947), pp. 37-38.

2 Statement of Dec. 4, 1946; General Assembly, Official Records, First Session, Second Part, First Committee, Summary Records of Meetings, 2 November-13 December 1946, p. 267.

415900-57-16

Soviet Union. But, no, the Council cannot recommend action which, as is the case with the action now under discussion, might be inconvenient to the Soviet Union. If we accepted such an interpretation of the Charter, I think that we should, indeed, go back to kindergarten. Mr. Vyshinsky went on to say that our proposals were dangerous because they did not reflect the necessity for unanimity between the permanent members of the Security Council. That unanimity, he said, is the "cornerstone," the "foundation," of the United Nations.1 Well, really! Is it the cornerstone, the foundation of this United Nations that there shall be unanimity among the permanent members of the Security Council? Of course, it is one of the things we want and one of the things that we hope for, but to say that it is the foundation of this organization is, indeed, an extraordinary statement, and it means that if that is the foundation of this organization, then, unhappily, the United Nations has no foundation at all, because, regrettably, there is not today that unanimity.

I do not know how they do things in the Soviet Union. Sometimes it seems that things are somewhat inside-out there. I know that with us the practice is to start with the foundation and then build on it. And where do I find in the Charter this rule, this foundation of the United Nations? I look to the Charter. I begin at the preamble, I read on through articles, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, and finally I reach the middle and come to article 27. Where is it in article 27? Is it in paragraph 1? No. Is it in paragraph 2? No. Tucked away in paragraph 3 of article 27 is a provision which says that on substantive matters action of the Security Council requires the concurring votes of the five permanent members. There, tucked away in the middle of the Charter, is what, to the Soviet Union, is the foundation of the United Nations. As I say, I do not understand this inside-out, upside-down process. I find the foundation of the United Nations in its opening paragraph, in its beginning, and in its preamble which expresses the determination of the peoples of the world

to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and to ensure . . . that armed forces shall not be used, save in the common interest. . .

...

I say that the foundation of this United Nations is not found in the rule of the big five but in the determination of the peoples of the world expressed and so eloquently expressed in the preamble to the Charter of our organization. That determination of the peoples is our foundation. It is the determination that still persists, and the determination which the members of the United Nations have the duty to implement through the Charter, which gives them the right to supplement it through recommendations which, although not selfoperating as are those taken by the Security Council, are nevertheless effective if, as we do not for a moment doubt, they respond to the will of the peoples whose determination is expressed here and is the true foundation of this organization.

Mr. Vyshinsky says that our proposals "would explode and crush

1 Statement of Oct. 10, 1950; New York Times, Oct. 11, 1950.

the Charter." I say that the views expressed by him "would explode and crush the peace." They would be notice to every potential aggressor that this organization is impotent to create a collective resistance to aggression, even by suggesting a voluntary creation and coordination of armed forces which is obviously desired by the peoples of the world.

I do not doubt that there are those among us and elsewhere who will be struck by the fact that the only strong opponent of our proposals for collective resistance to aggression is the great power which in recent years has been largely aggrandizing the area of its domain. And some will at least wonder if that coincidence is purely coincidental. A second and relatively minor legal argument relates to the question of whether this Assembly can decide now to meet in emergency session in the event of a future contingency that we defined, namely, failure of the Security Council to deal with a breach of the peace, coupled with the judgment of seven members of the Security Council that such an emergency meeting is desirable.

It is said that the suggestion that we should agree now, if that contingency happens, is illegal because it is said in article 20 that there shall be special sessions

at the request of the Security Council or of a majority of the Members of the United Nations.

And it is said that as far as the Security Council is concerned that that requires not just the vote, the action of seven members, but the concurring vote of the five permanent members so that such a call is subject to veto.

That is again an illustration of how tightly some of the permanent members would pull the noose of the veto that would strangle us. Article 27, which treats of the veto, says that:

Decisions of the Security Council on procedural matters shall be made by an affirmative vote of seven members.

That is, it means any seven members. And what are procedural matters? I would assume that the Charter was a guide to that.

What is the caption in the Charter before article 20? This word is "Procedure." It is indeed strange, concerning the veto, to contend. that although article 27 says that any seven members can act on procedural matters, and although the Charter itself labels article 20, dealing with the calling of special sessions of the General Assembly, as procedural, that, nevertheless, is again vetoable.

Most of us here recall that in the spring of 1949 the General Assembly, by a vote of 43-6, with 2 abstentions, expressed, at least as far as we were concerned, that decisions in this respect should be deemed procedural matters. I refer to resolution 267 (III).1

I think that this whole line of argumentation misses the point and is perhaps only significant as indicating the extremes to which the veto would be pushed.

The point, as I see it, is that the General Assembly can decide for

1 A Decade of American Foreign Policy, pp. 1075-1076.

itself when it will meet. It is the master of its own procedure and if we want, by an appropriate vote, we can decide and decide now to meet on any future contingency we name. Article 20, to be sure, states certain cases where we can be compelled by the Security Council to meet whether we want to or not. The Security Council by a vote of seven members can compel us to meet. But we are not talking about meeting under compulsion. We are talking about meeting when we want to meet, and surely we have the right to decide when we want to meet, and surely the Security Council has no right to veto us. If we decide now that it is important that the General Assembly should meet in special emergency session, in the event of a breach of the peace, as found by certain persons, surely it is right for us now and lawful for us now to decide to meet then. We would be meeting pursuant to our own volition and pursuant to our own vote, in the event of a contingency, which may come about and which we foresee if it does happen, will be grave enough so that there will be held instantly a special emergency meeting of the General Assembly.

Those are legal questions that have been argued, the question of whether article 10 means what it says and, the question of whether we have the right to determine for ourselves if we will meet in the event of a defined future contingency.

I turn now to matters of substance, not dealing with them in detail, because the occasion for that will come later. I merely say now that a number of amendments have been proposed and considerable elements of those amendments are looked upon by the sponsors as constructive, helpful, and within the spirit of what we have in mind, and are acceptable to us. We hope to prepare promptly and to submit to the First Committee a revised draft resolution which will incorporate certain of the proposals that have been made here. I hope that they will, among other things, satisfy certain doubts that have been raised with reference to the precise role of the Collective Measures Committee which is dealt with in part D of our proposal.

I should say here, in case there is any doubt, that, of course, it was never at all in the minds of the sponsors that this Committee would have the task either of surveying natural resources, prying into military secrets, or engaging in secret military planning. If we failed in our drafting to make that point clear, we welcome the opportunity to clarify our views in that respect and to remove any doubts that may exist in the minds of any.

Our revised draft resolution will also take account of what, I think, is a very legitimate point made here with regard to safeguarding the constitutional procedures of some of the member states. That concern was safeguarded by article 48 of the Charter, which dealt with action, and we agree that it should also be safeguarded by our draft resolution.

As I said yesterday, the sponsors are in the process of agreeing with the delegation of Chile, so that there will be no competition, but rather cooperation between the two resolutions.

There are other amendments which, after careful study, the sponsors do not feel that they can accept, and these will no doubt have to be

submitted to the vote of this Committee, which is the way in which differences of opinion can be and ought to be resolved..

One of the proposals submitted during the course of the general debate is the Soviet proposal, document A/C.1/579, which, I gather, is a substitute for the portions of the seven-power resolution which the Soviet Union rejects. It calls for the

rapid application of articles 43, 45, 46, and 47 of the Charter of the United Nations relating to the placing of armed forces at the disposal of the Security Council by the States Members of the United Nations and the effective operation of the Military Staff Committee.1

Mr. Vyshinsky, in his address introducing those proposals said:

We have to implement Chapter VII of the Charter and we have to see to it that the Military Staff Committee shall finally buckle down to work and tackle this question which will determine the broad lines of the special military agreements to be concluded under Article 43.2

Well, when Mr. Vyshinsky demanded that the Military Staff Committee should buckle down to this problem, there had then been 17 consecutive meetings of the Military Staff Committee, all of which were conspicuous by the absence of the representative of the Soviet Union. The next day, after this new Soviet Union proposal was introduced, another meeting of the Military Staff Committee was held. Then, at least, we thought there would be a representative of the Soviet Union present. It was, however, the same story. For the eighteenth consecutive time, following the eloquent appeal of Mr. Vyshinsky, following the introduction of his draft resolution that the Military Staff Committee should buckle down to work, the seat of the Soviet Union remained vacant. Well, of course, if we want satisfaction, we can go back, no doubt, to those words which still resound in our ears, the eloquent words of Mr. Vyshinsky, "let the Military Staff Committee buckle down to this task," which words will resound and resound and may satisfy us. But really, are we bobby-soxers who swoon when our modern Frank Sinatra croons?

As we pass from this general debate to a detailed section-by-section study of the proposals, I hope we will not, in discussing the details, lose sight of the great purpose that underlies the pending seven-power resolution, a purpose which has so often been so eloquently expressed in the course of the general debate. The action which is contemplated is indeed momentous. It may determine, perhaps decisively and finally for our generation, whether or not the nations of the world really want an effective, as against a paper, system of collective resistance to aggression. Much, indeed, will depend upon what we do here.

We are indeed engaged in a serious affair. I am confident that the detailed discussion will confirm what the general debate has so clearly shown, namely, that the overwhelming majority of our members do

1 The functions of the Military Staff Committee are described in article 47 of the U.N. Charter; supra, doc. 1.

2 Statement of Oct. 10, 1950; New York Times, Oct. 11, 1959.

Draft resolution of Oct. 13, 1950; Department of State Bulletin, Oct. 23, 1950, pp. 655-656.