21

majority. Doubt was resolved by Mr Molotov on 14 October, when lie informed the Plenary Conference that Russia would refuse to accept certain recommendations passed by a two-thirds majority when they came before the Council of Foreign Ministers. At the second meeting of the Procedural Commission the Yugoslavrepresentative proposed the insertion of a proviso in the voting rules to the effect that—- " In the case of recommendations dealing with boundary questions T the representative of the Allied Power whose racial or national groups are effected shall have voted." The effect of this proposal would have been to make any settlement of the problem of Trieste and Istria impossible without Yugoslavia'sapproval. It was not accepted. LANGUAGES English, French, and Russian were the official and working languages of the Conference and Commissions. Thus, for the first time at a large international Conference, Russian was given the status, previously confined to English and French, of a working language. The requirement that everything spoken or written should be translated into two additional languages had the great advantage of reducing,, though not removing, the possibilities of misunderstanding, though it naturally added considerably to the length of the Conference and increased the formality of the discussions. The Chinese delegation put on record their intention of pressing for the inclusion of Chinese as an official (not a working) language of the Far Eastern Peace Conference^). PARTICIPATION OF EX-ENEMY STATES Representatives of Italy, Roumania, Bulgaria, and Finland were invited to appear before the Plenary Conference at its early sessions,, to give the general viewpoint of their Governments upon the relevant draft peace treaties. Thereafter they appeared before the variousCommissions upon invitation, and stated their opinions (which were usually amplified by written memoranda) upon the most important individual articles as these came up for examination.

(!) The following statement was submitted by the Chinese delegation : " Under the Charter of the United Nations, Chinese is one of the five official languages, and at the meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers at London last September it was agreed and acted upon that important decisions and documents should be translated into Chinese and circulated among the delegations. Such arrangement does not involve any additional expenditure of time of the meetings of a Conference. The Chinese delegation do not intend to ask this Conference to follow the aforesaid practice in view of technical difficulties involved. We wish, however, to put on record that in future meetings, and particularly in conferences dealing with peace in the Far Fast concerning Japan, China will certainly expect the inclusion of Chinese as one of the official languages."