UN General Assembly
1961

95. Cochin-China — today South Viet-Nam — was, when the French arrived in the middle of the nineteenth century, Cambodian territory partly occupied by Annam. France then simply annexed that territory, including the provinces in dispute between Cambodia and Annam, and turned it first into a colony and subsequently into a French department with elected deputies sitting in the French Parliament. 96. In 1946-1947 France, having to fight the Vietnamese insurrection which was particularly well entrenched in the North, set up a provisional government of South Viet-Nam. Later, in 1948-1949, it recalled Bao Dai, the ex-Emperor who had abdicated in 1945, proclaimed him Chief of State, and transferred to him Cochin-China, a French territory, with the assent of the French Parliament. The King of Cambodia protested officially against this transfer of territories over which our country continued to maintain its legal rights—but in vain.