DEPARTMENT OF STATE PUBLICATION 2490 CONFERENCE SERIES 83 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents Price $2.75 Note. Copies of Facsimile of the Charter of the United Nations, Statute of the International Court of Justice, and Interim Arrangements in Five Languages (Department of State publication 2368, Conference Series 76) and The International Court of Justice (Department of State publication 2491, Conference Series 84) may be obtained from the Superintendent of Documents, United States Government Printing Office, Washington 25, D.C., at 60 cents and $1.00 a copy, respectively. 1 1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 9-26-46 Preface The present volume is intended to provide a broad picture of the work of the United Nations Conference on International Organization at San Francisco which formulated the Charter of the United Nations; therefore, only documents of general interest have been selected. Those who wish the complete story are referred to the publication Documents of the United Nations Conference on International Organization (15 volumes) issued by the United Nations Information Office in New York City. The task of the San Francisco Conference was to discuss, amend, and adopt the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals agreed to earlier by the four sponsoring governments-the Republic of China, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. To show how much was accomplished at San Francisco in the development of the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals, these Proposals have been printed in full, together with the amendments offered by other governments. For convenience of reference these amendments have been placed immediately after the chapters, sections, and paragraphs of the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals to which they apply. Other documents are grouped chiefly according to committee, commission, and plenary sessions, the bodies through which the Conference worked, and in chronological order within those groups. Special sections deal with organization and procedures. At the end of the volume will be found literal prints of the Charter of the United Nations, the Statute of the International Court of Justice, and the Interim Arrangements, together with a report of the first meeting of the Preparatory Commission. For the purpose of this volume, it has been deemed sufficient to print the rapporteurs' reports of the twelve technical committees, together with the reports of certain subcommittees, and to omit the summary reports (i.e. condensed minutes) of individual meetings. Excerpts are printed from the summary reports of the Executive and Steering Committees. For the sessions of the commissions and the plenary sessions of the Conference, both of which were open to the public, the verbatim minutes have been reproduced. In the section entitled "Amendments to and Comments on Dumbarton Oaks Proposals", the Proposals are printed in bold type. Similarly, in sections dealing with committee reports, the texts recommended by the technical committees, which served as the basis of the Charter, are printed in bold type. It will be noted that references in the documents to the specific paragraphs, sections, and chapters of the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals frequently do not conform to the clauses of the Charter. A table is given in appendix II showing the correspondence between these two documents. The documents included in this volume have been edited for uniformity in capitalization and spelling, but every care has been taken to avoid any change in substance. Official documents are frequently cold things, but it is believed that these papers show how widely good-will and the spirit of cooperation prevailed at San Francisco, in spite of many tense moments, and how much they contributed to the achievement of the Conference. April 25, 1946 |