SECURITY 127.

1. The Committee on membership [1] after further examination of
the Albanian case has adopted a list of questions by sub-Committee
consisting of Australia, Egypt and Poland, for submission to the
Albanian representative in New York. The list which will be
published is given in my immediately succeeding telegram. [2]

2 An additional question asking whether Albania was willing to
enter into diplomatic exchanges with members of the United Nations
was omitted from the list. In accepting the omission we made it
clear that we regarded the answer to such a question as being
necessary criterion of membership in the United Nations and that
it did not apply to the Albanian case simply because it was known
that Albania had already entered into relations or was negotiating
exchanges. Several other delegations, who, like ourselves,
probably had in mind the case of closed countries such as Outer
Mongolia, followed our lead and expressed a similar understanding.

3. We had also favoured inclusion of question whether Albanian
application accorded with Albanian constitutional requirements. We
based our case on
(a) the necessity for some formality in connection with
applications, both to insure that they were in a form acceptable
to the United Nations and had been made by a duly authorised
person
(b) the element of doubt in the Albanian application because it
had been submitted by undated telegram forwarded by the Government
of Yugoslavia. The majority of the Committee, however, take the
view that the Security Council by remitting the application for
examination had already decided that it was in order.

The question was deleted but we formally reserved our right to
reopen it later. In the course of discussion, several opposing
delegations sympathized with our general views, but thought that
any doubt could be resolved by the Committee itself and the
Secretariat has been instructed to prepare a paper on this
subject. Reference was also made by the French representative to
the possibility that if the Albanian application was not in order
it could be set right by ratification by the Albanian Parliament
after admission. We pointed out that while the Charter required
ratification by original signatories, there was no similar
provision regarding new members and owing to the haste with which
the Security Council had decided on procedures for admission no
such requirement existed in the present rules governing admission.

We would appreciate your instructions on how far we should carry
any objection to the Albanian application on the grounds that it
has not been properly made.