China in the UN

I THINK you exaggerate when you describe ("China in the UN", October 30) the failure of Americans to carry through their resolution making China's admission an 'important question' as a 'defeat' of American foreign policy. The American resolution was defeated by a small margin of votes (54 against 59) and that too despite the fact that the US did not use all the forces at its command to pressurise member states to support its resolution, Leaving aside the small Afro-Asian states, even Britain could not have afforded to vote against the US resolution if the US had fully exercised all its political-economic influence over it. If the US made any efforts, it was not so much to save Taiwan as to get a respectable number of votes (though not a majority) in favour of its resolution to convince the American public that it did try to save its faithful ally from being expelled. Perhaps Kissinger had even mentioned to Chou that for the sake of domestic public opinion, the US had to put up a show of trying to save Taiwan's seat in the UN.