216. Memorandum From Acting Secretary of State Ball to President Kennedy1
SUBJECT
- The Seventeenth General Assembly
You have called a meeting for 4:00 p.m., on Tuesday, August 21, to consider United States strategy at the 17th Session of the General Assembly. I am attaching a strategy paper which has been fully considered throughout the Department, with Ambassador Stevenson and his staff, and with the Secretary.2
Last year our objective was to get certain activities started or restarted in the United Nations: to begin disarmament talks on a new basis, to get the United Nations and some of its constituent agencies into the outer space business, and to put more vigor into economic and social activities under a UN Decade of Development.
This year, the Organization needs a breathing spell in which to consolidate its strength, get its finances in order, and improve its executive capacity for peacekeeping and nation-building. In general, we believe the United States should not try to add significant new tasks to its load this fall, except a new emphasis on the development and use of peaceful settlement procedures under the United Nations. The successful conclusion of the ticklish negotiations over West New Guinea helps re-emphasize the importance of the “third man” in international politics.
Nearly every element of United States foreign policy enters into planning for a General Assembly. But in our meeting on Tuesday, I suggest we focus on the following issues on which we need a clear signal from you as a basis for the wide consultations on many subjects which will be undertaken between now and September 18 in New York and with Foreign Offices all over the world:
1. Peaceful Settlement and Development.
The themes of the opening United States speech in the general debate should be (a) the further development under the United Nations of the machinery of pacific settlement, and (b) the opportunities for growing prosperity as the more advanced nations work with the less-developed nations in a broad United Nations framework which makes [Page 463] possible a relationship of equality and mutual respect between stronger and weaker members of the international economy.
United Nations resources for “quiet diplomacy” need to be developed as a real alternative to acrimonious public debate. The strategy paper includes suggestions for reforms in General Assembly procedures, the use of rapporteurs, establishment of a United Nations institute in this field, and the development of international law.
2. United Nations Finances.
The General Assembly will have to face up to the question, “After the Bond Issue, What?”. Presumably we want to expand the regular budget to take care of as much of the peacekeeping expense as possible. Beyond a rise in the regular budget, there is a fork in the road: one road leads to a special scale in which the United States would probably have to pay 44% or so; the other is to finance each United Nations peace-and-security operation by special voluntary contributions from a smaller number of countries which would, however, have more explicit control over the operations to which they are contributing. We need to make a political judgment, in consultation with the Congress, which of these roads best serves the United States national interest.
3. Disarmament and Nuclear Issues.
Our objective should be to keep the Geneva discussions alive and use them to prevent irresponsible exhortations from being passed as resolutions in the General Assembly. We will want to make clear that we don’t want other nations to develop national nuclear capabilities, but clearly leave the door ajar to a multilateral NATO nuclear deterrent. We should support any moves by other countries (for example, the Africans) to pass self-denying ordinances against nuclear weapons in their zones. And, we should press in the General Assembly for a nuclear test ban along the lines we finally decide to recommend in Geneva, resisting again (as we did last year) any uninspected moratorium. (In addition to the comprehensive test ban, ACDA is considering a recommendation to revive the atmospheric test ban idea in some form.)
4. Outer Space.
The fact that the Soviets put two men in space last week changes the political atmosphere without changing the basic problem. Our objective in the United Nations should be to push along the arrangements for wide cooperation in the use of space for weather services and weather research, and for communications. One United Nations “operation” can probably be started, an international rocket sounding facility near the geomagnetic equator, probably in India.
[Page 464]Defense of our space program will also be high on the agenda. A clear pronouncement on our part as to the peaceful motivations of our military space program will be essential.
5. Colonial Issues.
We will face a series of dilemmas with mounting pressures from the Africans and Asians for rapid solutions to the most complicated “hard core” colonial problems, including not only those created by South Africa and Portugal policies, but a growing attention to British decolonization plans, particularly in the Federation.
One troublesome issue is the irresponsible way in which the Committee of 17 has developed; we would like to consider with you the advantages and the disadvantages of forcing the Soviets off the Committee of 17 by getting off the Committee ourselves.
We will face this year, for the first time in a serious way, the question of sanctions by the General Assembly to express its dissatisfaction with policies of colonial powers. The sanctions issue may arise in various forms requiring on our part various types of response. In the foreseeable cases, we should vigorously oppose sanctions as a way of dealing with Portuguese colonial policy and South African race policy; if the sanctions issue is brought up in connection with Katanga, it is not quite so clear that we would want to rule out United Nations legislation on the subject.
6. Congo.3
If, as is not improbable, the present “Course of Action” fails to produce a reconciliation between Leopoldville and Elisabethville, we will have to work out some other way of disengaging the United Nations from its peacekeeping responsibility in the Congo before the United Nations runs out of Bond money, energy, and will to cope with the problem.
7. UNRWA.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency comes up for extension this year. Our bet will presumably be on the Johnson proposals. We will need to protect them from diversionary resolutions from both sides; but we should avoid the appearance of opposition to direct negotiations between Israel and the Arab states whenever in the future that becomes possible.
8. Hungary.
The Hungary item has become very unpopular in the General Assembly because of its repetitive character and its status as a “Cold [Page 465] War” issue. On the other hand, it is an important issue to some of the nationality groups in this country. The problem is to make clear our continuing opposition to Communist oppression in Hungary while eliminating the item as a hardy perennial on the General Assembly agenda.
9. Berlin.
Berlin is not on the General Assembly agenda. Khrushchev may decide to use the 17th General Assembly to present the Soviet case either before or after a “Peace Treaty” with East Germany. We have developed a separate contingency paper on this topic.4
Ambassador Stevenson will be in Washington August 21 for the meeting in your offices on these matters.
- Source: Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Subjects Series, United Nations (General), 7/62–8/62, Box 311. Confidential. Forwarded to Bundy under a covering note from Deputy Executive Secretary Brubeck, also dated August 16.↩
- This 22-page paper is not printed.↩
- In the margin next to this item, Bundy wrote, “G. Ball.”↩
- In the margin, Bundy wrote: “Paper not at hand.”↩
- Printed from a copy that bears this stamped signature.↩