FOREIGN RELATIONS, 1950, VOLUME I


Senate Resolution 236 requesting "the United Nations ,to call an inter-
national conference with a view to achieving world disarmament".
  The Department fully understands and is in complete sympathy
with the objective of the resolution, namely, achieving world dis-
armament. However, it cannot agree with ithe timeliness of the-method
advocated for aochieving ,the .objective.
   By subscribing to ,the Charter of the Unitted Nations, ptarticularly
Articles 11, 26 and 47, the United States committed itself to work
for and to achieve the universal regulation and reduction of armaments
and it presumed that all the other signatory nations undertook the
same solemn obligation. Conscientious efforts have been made in the
United Nations since its establishment to fulfill these requirements of
the Charter by action in the General Assembly, inithe Security Council,
in the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission (created for the
formulation of specific proposals ,for the internaional control of
atomic weapons and other major weapons adacpable to mass destruc-
tion), and in the United Nations Commission for Conventional Arma-
ments (the 'field of competence of which is the formulation of pro-
posals 'for the regulation :and reductionof ,all other weapons).
   As you know the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission was
 set up by the General Assembly Resolution of January 24, 1916. It has
 developed a detailed plan for the international control of atomic
 energy ,and -the 'prohibition of atomic weapons based on United States
 proposials submi tted by Mr. B,]aruch to the. Commission on June 14,1946
 and now endorsed by the overwhelming majority of the Member na-.
 tions in the United Nations. The Commission for Conventional Arma-
 ments established by the Security Couneil Resolution of February 13,
 1947 has directed itself to the careful preparation of proposals for the

 regulation and reduction ,of conventional armaments and armed forces.
 In effect, therefore, it can be said that a disarmament conference has
 been going on since 1946 within the United Nations with the full sup-
 port and active leadership of the United States.

    S. Res. 236, introduced by Senator Millard E. Tydings of Maryland on
  March 6 and referred to the Foreign Relations Committee, read as follows:
    "Resolved, That the United Nations is hereby requested to invite
the repre-
  sentatives of the governments of all nations to enter into an understanding
and
  agreement to achieve world disarmament on land, on sea, and in the air,
includ-
  ing bacteriological warfare, poison-gas warfare, and so forth, by January
1, 1954,
  except only for !such actual occupying forces, with appropriate weapons,
and
  for such agreed period of time, as will be necessary to police the defeated
and
  occupied nations as a result of the recent war, and except only for such
a.rmed
  forces and for such weapons as are to be placed exclusively under the juris-
  diction of the Security Council of the United Nations Organization, and
except
  only for .such limited forces and limited small arms as are needed to keep
law
  and order within each country, and directly prohibiting the manufacture,
storage,
  and possession of all other weapons, ammunition, and munitions of war,
and
  providing further for the international inspection force authorized and
in-
  structed to see that the terms of such world disarmament are rigidly adhered
  to and carried out, and thereafter maintained by all the countries of the
earth."


64