Letter from Frank Coffey to Seán Nunan (Washington DC)

Minister
I had luncheon today with Mr. Sweeney of the State Department. We had scarcely seated ourselves at table when he said that he presumed that if Ireland were a member of the United Nations she would raise the question of Partition, and he asked me whether I thought he would be correct in saying that we would not bargain with Russia and the Eastern bloc nations to secure their support. My reply was that as a Catholic nation and as a country whose sympathies lie with the democracies, we would not do this. I felt that he had some reason for asking this question, particularly as I remembered that quite recently in the U.N. Russia had proposed that all the nations seeking membership and who had been vetoed either by Russia or the U.S. should be admitted en bloc and not be considered individually on their merits. I inquired whether it was likely that the U.S. Government would yield to Russia's proposal and Sweeney replied that it was quite a possibility. He went on to mention that some days ago he had been asked to write a report on the consequences of Ireland's admission to U.N. In this report he pointed out that Ireland had a good record as a member of the League of Nations and that in the U.N. Ireland would probably vote with the democratic nations. He did not, however, know whether the U.S. would in fact eventually agree to Russia's proposal, but he thought that there was quite a possibility that it would.¹

Later he mentioned that he had heard from an unofficial source that Philip Noel-Baker, Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations in the British Cabinet, would shortly 'resign' and that he would be succeeded by Hector McNeil.²