major decisions. He went public with strong advocacy in the 1944 presidential campaign, and turned detailed planning over to the State Department, where Sumner Welles and Secretary Cordell Hull worked on the project. Governments, organizations and private citizens worldwide discussed and debated these proposals. At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin agreed to the establishment of the United Nations, as well as the structure of the United Nations Security Council. Stalin insisted on having a veto and FDR finally agreed; thus avoiding the fatal weakness of the League of Nations, which had theoretically been able to order its members to act in defiance of their own parliaments. It was agreed that membership would be open to nations that had joined the Allies by 1 March 1945. Brazil, Syria and a number of other countries qualified for membership by declarations of war on either Germany or Japan in the first three months of 1945 – in some cases retroactively. San Francisco conference On 25 April 1945, the United Nations Conference on International Organization began in San Francisco sponsored by the Big Four. The heads of the delegations of the four sponsoring countries invited the other nations to take part and took turns as chairman of the plenary meetings: Anthony Eden, of Britain, Edward Stettinius, of the United States, T. V. Soong, of China, and Vyacheslav Molotov, of the Soviet Union. At the later meetings, Lord Halifax deputized for Eden, Wellington Koo for T. V. Soong, and Andrei Gromyko for Molotov. France was added as a permanent member of the Security Council at the insistence of Churchill. After working for two months, the fifty nations represented at the conference signed the Charter of the United Nations on 26 June. The charter stated that before it would come into effect, it must be ratified by the governments of the China, France, the USSR, Great Britain and the United States, and by a majority of the other 46 signatories. This occurred on 24 October 1945, and the United Nations was officially formed. The first meeting of the General Assembly was held in Westminster Central Hall, London, on 10 January 1946. The Security Council met for the first time a week later in Church House, Westminster. The League of Nations formally dissolved itself on 18 April 1946 and transferred its mission to the United Nations. Activities The United Nations has achieved