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(V) Rules governing the admission of new members, recommended by the Committee of the General Assembly which was established at the previous regular session of the Assembly to confer with a similar Committee of the Security Council on this subject. (d) Protection of the rights of the General Assembly in relation to the admission of new members. (a) The admission of Yemen and Pakistan was unanimously approved by the First Committee and the General Assembly. There was, however, some discussion of a question raised by Argentina regarding the legal position of India and Pakistan as members of the United Nations arising from the partition of India. The representative of Argentina felt that both dominions were new States and questioned the justice of India's retaining the status of a foundation member, whereas Pakistan had been obliged to go through all the formal processes of admission. He therefore moved that both States should be regarded as having been admitted on 15 August, 1946, the date on which the two States achieved their independence. After some discussion the delegation of Australia submitted a motion, which was adopted, approving the admission of Yemen and Pakistan (and therefore respecting the situation as it existed) and, at the suggestion of Chile, added a motion that the legal principle involved should be referred to the Sixth (Legal) Committee for consideration in case a similar situation should arise at any time in the future. The Sixth Committee subsequently reported that (i) as a general rule, it is in conformity with legal principles to presume that a State which is a member of the United Nations does not cease to be a member simply because its constitution or its frontiers have been subjected to changes, and that the extinction of the State as a legal personality recognized in the international order must be shown before its rights and obligations can be considered thereby to have ceased to exist; (ii) when the new State is created, whatever may be the territory and the populations which it comprises, and whether or not they formed part of a State member of the United Nations, it cannot, under the system of the Charter, claim the status of a member of the United Nations unless it has been formally admitted as such in conformity with the provisions of the Charter; (iii) beyond that, each case must be judged according to its merits. (b) The Committee also considered the failure of the Security Council to recommend the admission of eleven other States, five of which— Albania, Eire, Outer Mongolia, Portugal, and Transjordan—had been referred back to the Security Council for re-examination by the previous regular session of the General Assembly. The six other applicants —Austria, Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary, Italy, and Roumania—had applied and been rejected since the Assembly's previous resolution.
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