Repeat Permdel No. 93

1. I asked Hickerson to lunch today in order to secure from him information on the latest planning in the State Department before my own departure for Ottawa tomorrow. He said that they were developing a 3-point programme dealing with the theme of united action to stop aggression. Active planning was well advanced on this programme in the Bureau of United Nations Affairs and he had discussed its general outline with the Secretary of State, but it was not as yet adopted as a definite policy of the State Department. He several times expressed the desire to receive from us ideas and comments on the proposals as soon as possible. He added that he had given fuller information to me about the programme than had yet been made available to his senior colleagues in the State Department.

2. The first point is that described in paragraphs 2, 3, and 4 of my message WA1543 of July 15th.† For convenience, however, I shall repeat the proposal here. The purpose is to find a means whereby the United Nations can organize action to meet a breach of the peace even after a veto in the Security Council. This could be done by changing the Rules of Procedure of the Assembly so as to provide for the automatic convening within twenty-four hours of a special session of the Assembly if the Security Council holds by a vote of any seven members that a breach of the peace has been committed, even if one or more permanent members vote against this finding. The effect would be to treat such a finding of the Security Council as a sort of procedural decision involving the convening of the Assembly immediately, even though negative votes might be cast by several permanent members. The Assembly so convened would then be in a position to make recommendations by a two-thirds majority, and these recommendations could be as far-reaching as those of the Security Council in the Korean case. He thinks that the proposal should include some standing provision for organizing through a Special Committee (or through the Interim Committee) the responses made by members to the recommendations of the Assembly, and he said that he would particularly welcome ideas on this point. You will note that there are slight changes in this proposal from the version put forward in my WA-1543, but it is substantially the same.

3. The second point in the programme would be the establishment by the Assembly of a Permanent Commission, which could by majority vote decide to conduct an investigation on the spot into a threat to the peace in any part of the worlds provided that the country concerned were ready to receive them, and make recommendations. (Someone in the United States delegation in New York has made the ingenious suggestion, in order to keep the Security Council in the picture, that the recommendations made by this Permanent Commission could be rejected by a vote of seven members of the Security Council, which would mean the. application of the veto in reverse.) This is fundamentally the same idea that was put forward late last week by the State Department in the hope that there would be agreement on action to this end by the Security Council on July 31st just before Malik's return. The British and French, however, refused to endorse the proposal, and it is now being re-vamped so that the Commission would be set up by the Assembly and not by the Security Council. The membership of the Commission might be identical with that of the Security Council.

4. The third point would provide for the establishment of a United Nations force, which could be employed for police or occupation duties in troubled areas and might also be used against open aggression. You are already familiar with the ideas to this end under discussion here and in New York. Hickerson said he could find no constitutional argument based on the Charter against the Assembly authorizing a force of this character. I gather that he would like to see a force of some size and would prefer that it should be financed from United Nations contributions. He recognizes, however, that it would be very difficult to secure the approval of twothirds of the members to such a substantial addition to the budget. Part of the cost might be met by a lump sum vote. It is the prospect that, with the end of the fighting in Korea, occupation forces may have to remain there for a long time that has made the thought of an efficient United Nations force particularly attractive just now.

5. In my following message† I pass on some other information resulting from this discussion.