269. Telegram From the Mission to the United Nations to the Department of State1
1042. UN Scale of Assessments.
Fedorenko (USSR) called me out of plenary today to discuss UN scale of assessments and handed me an unofficial Sov memo as fols:
Begin Verbatim Text
“In his address to the plenary meeting of the United Nations General Assembly on 20 September the President of the United States John F. Kennedy expressed the opinion that ‘it is high time that many disputes on the agenda of this Assembly were taken off the debating schedule and placed on the negotiating table.’
[Page 594]The scale of assessments for sharing expenses of the United Nations is one of the highly disputed and unsettled question on which there exist substantial differences between the positions of the United States and the USSR and on which heated discussion had taken place at a number of General Assembly sessions. Further aggravation of differences of opinion on this question would affect most adversely the development of cooperation of states within the framework of the United Nations and could threaten the whole financial basis of this organisation.
The divergencies on the scale of assessments have resulted from the wrong approach to assessing the contributions of the USSR and other socialist countries, on the one hand, and of the United States and other Western powers, on the other hand. The bias of this approach is due to the failure to take into account, contrary to the decision of the 1st General Assembly session, such an important criterion set by the 1st session as comparative income per head of population. This failure was due to fixing the ceiling of 30 per cent for the United States assessment. Although it was intended to use this ceiling only when normal conditions prevail in the world, in practice this ceiling is wrongfully used already now.
Besides while determining the scale of assessments such important criteria as opportunities of individual members for acquiring foreign currency and temporary dislocation of the national economy as a result of World War II had not been taken into account.
The first of these criteria is of paramount importance for the USSR and other socialist countries whose foreign trade is still being subjected to barriers established mainly by the United States.
The second criterion is still of some importance for assessing the contributions of the USSR and a number of other countries, which is proved, for example, by the fact that according to the 1957 census the number of women in the Soviet Union exceeds by 20 million the number of men. These data reflect most important and grave consequences of war which still greatly influence many aspects of life in our country. It is as a result of World War II that the Soviet Union still bears enormous expenditure on pensions to the veterans of war and their families, as well as big expenditure on medical service for both the military and civilian personnel—veterans of war whose health had been undermined during the war.
As a result of these wrong attitudes there exists such an abnormal situation when the assessments of the United States and other Western countries are substantially reduced with every passing year while the assessments of the USSR and other socialist countries increase, as is shown by the following table.
[Page 595]Assessments for United Nations Budget
| 1947 | 1963 | 1963 (percentage of 1947) | |
| USA | 39.88 | 32.02 | 80.3 percent |
| Great Britain | 11.98 | 7.58 | 63.2 percent |
| France | 6.00 | 5.94 | 99.0 percent |
| USSR | 7.40 | 17.47 | 236.0 percent |
| Poland | 0.95 | 1.28 | 134.7 percent |
| Czechoslovakia | 0.90 | 1.17 | 130.0 percent |
Replying to a reporter’s question Mr. Adali Stevenson, United States Representative to the United Nations, said on 21 May 1961 with reference to the United States assessment that based on the ability to pay, the United States assessment for the United Nations regular budget is smaller than it should be. He said he believed that the figures of total national output indicated that the United States should pay 38.5 per cent instead of 32 per cent.
A year later, on the 27th of June 1962 Mr. Stevenson, replying to a question concerning the assessments of the United States for the United Nations budget, stated in the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives of the United States Congress, ‘that, based on ability to pay, the United States should pay something like 44 or 45 per cent of the UN assessments’.
The Soviet Union regards as most unsatisfactory the present situation in regard to the scale of assessments to the United Nations budget, and believes that the USSR assessment was established on a wrong and unjust basis.
Not only socialist countries but many other members of the United Nations object against the failure to observe the above mentioned criteria adopted by the 1st Session of the General Assembly and particularly against fixing the ceiling for the United States assessment.
To avoid the aggravation of the situation during the consideration at this and future sessions of the General Assembly of the scale of assessments for the United Nations budget, including the question of the ceiling for the United States, which could have certain effect on the general political atmosphere, the Soviet Union is prepared to seek ways of settling this question on the basis of the proposal to freeze the existing scale of assessments for the United Nations budget for the period of ten years.” End Verbatim Text.
I attempted find out what exactly meant by last para. Fedorenko explained that they wanted discuss with us bilaterally possibly changes in scale of assessments, taking present scale as basis for discussion, and then fix scale agreed upon for 10 years.
- Source: Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Subjects Series, United Nations (General), 10/63–11/63, Box 311. Confidential; Verbatim Text. A handwritten note from Bundy to Belk reads: “Sam: Is there some hope in this? McG B.”↩