Letter from Seán Murphy to William P. Fay (Paris)
(Confidential) (Copy)

I wish to thank you for your confidential letter of the 28th June¹ covering your most interesting and valuable report on the Algerian question. This will be of great help to the Minister and the Department and also, of course, to the Permanent Delegate to the UN.

I might mention that a few weeks ago the French Ambassador spoke to me about the probability that a strong effort would be made to place the Algerian question on the agenda of the UN Assembly next November, and expressed the hope that the Irish Government would not support such a move in view of the fact that the question was clearly a domestic one within the meaning of Article 2(7) of the Charter. The Minister, of course, does not intend to come to any definite decisions on matters of this kind until the Permanent Delegate has taken up his appointment and has an opportunity of expressing his views. While I think it extremely unlikely that we would vote against France on the Algerian question we must, as you say yourself, examine very carefully the implications of voting for a country which is invoking Article 2(7).