who is elected to serve on one of the expert bodies subsidiary and advisory to the General Assembly can be continued in office if he ceases to be acceptable to his own government. The United States strongly maintained the position that it is inappropriate and undesirable to subject the membership of expert advisory bodies to the whims of changing national political regimes. The United States reasoned that the General Assembly had the choice of confirming the long-accepted principle of looking to committees of independent experts to assist in the consideration of complex administrative and financial matters, or of establishing the undesirable precedent that members of expert committees should represent their own national governments. If the General Assembly were to take the latter course, the Advisory Committee and the Contributions Committee would tend to represent the interests of only 9 and 10 Member states, respectively, instead of serving objectively the interests of the total membership.

The United States position accorded fully with the spontaneous reaction of many other delegations. By a vote of 30 to 6, with 13 abstentions, the General Assembly decided against the termination of Dr. Papanek's office.

During the course of the General Assembly session, Donald C. Stone, the United States national serving on the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, submitted his resignation because of the press of duties with the Economic Cooperation Administration in Washington. The General Assembly unanimously elected William O. Hall, Director of the Office of Budget and Planning, Department of State, to complete Mr. Stone's term of office, which expires at the end of 1949.

ADOPTION OF SPANISH AS A THIRD WORKING

LANGUAGE

Culminating a discussion which began during the San Francisco conference in 1945, the General Assembly voted on December 7, 1948, to adopt Spanish as a third working language of the General Assembly in addition to the existing working languages, English and French. Spanish was already one of the five official languages. The decision was by a vote of 32 to 20, with 5 abstentions, despite a negative report by the Fifth Committee on this question, the United States voting in the negative.

The United States Delegation strongly supported the recommendation of the Secretary-General and the Advisory Committee against the adoption of a third working language. The Delegation made clear throughout the discussions in the Fifth Committee, and during the

plenary meetings of the Assembly itself, its view that the addition of any third working language would be undesirable because of the financial and administrative consequences. The United States Delegation pointed out that the existing rules of procedure concerning languages were sufficiently flexible to assure the 19 Spanish-speaking delegations that their practical working needs could be met without changing the status of Spanish and supported budgetary proposals designed to assure the meeting of such needs.

The adoption of a third working language necessitated an increase in the 1949 budget of $300,000. This is on the assumption that the decision will not become operative until the Fourth Session of the General Assembly next fall. The decision on Spanish will raise the same question with respect to Chinese and Russian.

ADMINISTRATIVE AND BUDGETARY RELA

TIONS WITH SPECIALIZED AGENCIES

The General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council, their subsidiary bodies, and the specialized agencies themselves have been preoccupied from the beginning with the problem of assuring that there is no duplication or overlapping of programs. They have also been concerned with the development of coordination in the administrative and financial fields with a view to improving efficiency and reducing the total costs of international organizations to the Member governments. Because the Charter assigns to the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council special responsibilities in this area, the United Nations has taken the lead.

Program and policy-coordination problems and decisions are mentioned elsewhere in this report. In the field of administrative and budgetary coordination the administrative heads of the United Nations and the specialized agencies have developed machinery which has already resulted in the solution of several complex problems and promises to produce even better results in the future. The Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions noted the pattern of ad hoc working parties and joint committees among the United Nations and the specialized agencies, which is assuring close cooperation, and expressed satisfaction that considerable efforts are being made to insure that funds are not wasted through duplication of activities. The General Assembly directed the Secretary-General, in consultation with the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, to continue efforts further to improve administrative and budgetary coordination between the United Nations and specialized agencies, including consideration of the possibility of

developing a joint system for external audit and for common collection of contributions.

INVITATION TO SECRETARY GENERAL OF

ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN STATES

At its Third Regular Session in Paris in 1948, the General Assembly adopted a resolution inviting the Secretary General of the Organization of American States to be present as an observer at the sessions of the General Assembly. This action resulted from an Argentine proposal for a permanent invitation to the Secretary General of the Organization. The Legal Committee, which recommended this action to the Assembly, stated its informal understanding that a similar status for the highest officers of other regional organizations would be favorably considered by the Assembly.

PERMANENT MISSIONS TO THE UNITED

NATIONS

Since the creation of the United Nations, the practice has developed of establishing permanent missions of Member states at the seat of the United Nations as a means of following more closely the activities of the organization. The credentials of these representatives were not submitted in any standard form, and it was sometimes difficult to determine whether delegates were entitled to represent their states on various organs of the United Nations.

With a view to regularizing the submission of credentials of permanent representatives, the General Assembly at its 1948 regular session adopted a resolution recommending that credentials should be issued either by the head of the state or of the government or by the minister of foreign affairs and should be transmitted to the Secretary-General. States desiring their delegates to represent them on one or more of the organs of the United Nations were requested to specify the organs in the credentials. The Secretary-General was instructed to submit at each regular session of the General Assembly a report on the credentials of representatives. The second part of the resolution of the Assembly instructs the Secretary-General to study all questions which may arise from the institution of permanent missions and, if necessary, to report on this subject at the next regular session of the Assembly.

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INTERNATIONAL LEGAL PROBLEMS

Cases Before International Court of Justice

CORFU CHANNEL CASE

On March 25, 1948, the International Court of Justice gave judgment on the preliminary objection raised by Albania in the Corfu Channel case.

The case arose out of the fact that on October 22, 1946, two British destroyers struck mines in Albanian territorial waters in the Corfu Channel. The explosions caused damage to the vessels and loss of life. A reference to the Security Council by the United Kingdom resulted in a recommendation by that body, on April 9, 1947, that the parties to the dispute refer the matter to the Court. On May 22, 1947, the United Kingdom filed an application with the Court, and by a letter of July 2, 1947, filed with the Registry of the Court, Albania indicated readiness to appear. Dates fixed for the filing of a memorial by the United Kingdom and of a countermemorial by Albania were October 1 and December 10, 1947, respectively. Within the time limit fixed for the latter, Albania submitted a "preliminary objection to the application on the ground of inadmissibility". Albania requested the Court (a) to place on record that in accepting the Security Council's recommendation of April 9, 1947, Albania had only undertaken to submit the dispute to the Court in accordance with the Statute, and (b) to give judgment that the application of the United Kingdom was inadmissible as "the case must be brought before the Court by the notification of the special agreement, and not by an application".

The Court duly placed on record, as requested by the Government of Albania, that the obligation incumbent upon that Government to refer the dispute to the Court, as a result of its acceptance of the Security Council's recommendation, could only be carried out in accordance with the Statute. It was pointed out in the judgment, however, that the Government of Albania had subsequently contracted other obligations. The Court did not consider that it was necessary to express an opinion on the contention of the United Kingdom that in all the circumstances there existed a case of compulsory jurisdiction. Rather, the Court held that the Albanian letter of July 2, 1947, constituted a voluntary acceptance of the Court's jurisdiction; it re

moved, it was held, all difficulties as to the admissibility of the application and as to jurisdiction. When the Albanian Government stated in its letter of July 2 that it was prepared, notwithstanding the "irregularity in the action taken by the Government of the United Kingdom, to appear before the Court", it was clear, the Court held, that it waived the right to raise an objection to admissibility; when the Albanian Government expressly referred to "its acceptance of the Court's jurisdiction for this case", these words, the Court held, constituted a voluntary and indisputable acceptance of the Court's jurisdiction. The Court also held that reservations contained in the letter were intended only to maintain a principle and to prevent the establishment of a precedent for the future.

The judgment was delivered by the 15 judges of the Court, together with Dr. Igor Daxner, who was appointed judge ad hoc by the Albanian Government and who dissented. Judges Basdevant of France, Alvarez of Chile, Winiarski of Poland, Zoricic of Yugoslavia, de Visscher of Belgium, Badawi Pasha of Egypt, and Krylov of the Soviet Union, while agreeing with the judgment of the Court, appended a separate opinion.

The Court fixed the time limits for the subsequent pleadings on the merits. The last of these time limits (the Albanian rejoinder) expired on September 20, 1948. Public hearings on the merits of the case began November 9, 1948, at The Hague.

ADVISORY OPINION ON MEMBERSHIP

QUALIFICATIONS

On November 17, 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution requesting the International Court of Justice to give an advisory opinion on the following question:

"Is a Member of the United Nations which is called upon, in virtue of Article 4 of the Charter, to pronounce itself by its vote, either in the Security Council or in the General Assembly, on the admission of a State to membership in the United Nations, juridically entitled to make its consent to the admission dependent on conditions not expressly provided by paragraph 1 of the said Article? In particular, can such a Member, while it recognizes the conditions set forth in that provision to be fulfilled by the State concerned, subject its affirmative vote to the additional condition that other States be admitted to membership in the United Nations together with that State?"