Council of Foreign Ministers
Council of Foreign Ministers was an organisation agreed upon at the Potsdam Conference in 1945 and announced in the Potsdam Agreement and dissolved upon the entry into force of the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany in 1991.
The Potsdam Agreement specified that the Council would be composed of the Foreign Ministers of the
List of meetings
Location | Date |
---|---|
London | 1945 |
Moscow | 1945, Dec |
Paris | 1946 |
New York | 1946, Nov–Dec |
Moscow | 1947, Mar–Apr |
London | 1947, Nov–Dec |
Paris | 1948, Sep |
Paris | 1949, May–Jun |
Berlin | 1954, Jan–Feb |
Geneva | 1955 |
Geneva | 1959 |
Berlin | 1971 |
Berlin | 1990 |
Source: Columbia Encyclopedia[1] |
Topics of discussion
The ministers met two times in 1945: first at the London Conference of Foreign Ministers and then in December at the
The London conference was marred by a dispute between the Soviet Union and the United States over the occupation of Japan and little of substance was accomplished. The Moscow conference was more productive; it agreed to the preparation of peace treaties with Italy, Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Finland; the creation of an eleven–member
In 1947 the ministers met twice first in Moscow, in the Spring, and again in the Autumn in London, but by this time the
At a meeting in Paris in September 1948, the ministers failed to agree on what to do with the former Italian colonies. The council was revived in 1949 and met in Paris, during May and June, where they agreed to the ending of the Soviet blockade of Berlin, but failed to agree on German reunification. The Berlin meeting in 1954 ended in deadlock, but the following year in Vienna, they agreed on a peace treaty for Austria (the Austrian State Treaty).
Meetings by the foreign ministers in Geneva, the first at the Geneva Summit in July 1955 and again a year later failed to reach an agreement on German reunification, or European security and disarmament. The third meeting in 1959 again failed to reach an agreement over Germany. The Western powers would only agree to a comprehensive peace treaty with a Germany reunited under a democratic government, not treaties with the governments of East Germany and West Germany. They also refused to agree with a Soviet proposal to a change in the status of Berlin from an occupied city into a demilitarised one.
In 1971 the foreign ministers of the four powers signed the
After the fall of the
References
- ^ "Foreign Ministers, Council of". The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Columbia University Press. 2012. Retrieved 2017-05-06.
- Foreign Ministers, Council of from The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed.
- Osmańczyk, Edmund Jan (2003). Encyclopedia of the United Nations and International Agreements: G to M. Taylor & Francis. pp. 815–817. ISBN 9780415939225.
- History.com: London Council of Foreign Ministers meeting begins