IO Files: US/A/743

Memorandum of Conversation, by the United States Representative on the Trusteeship Council (Sayre)

confidential
Participants: Raja Sir Maharaj Singh, Indian Delegation
H.E. Mr. Liu Chieh, Chinese Delegation
Mr. Awni Khalidy, Delegation of Iraq
Ambassador Francis B. Sayre, United States Delegation

I met with Raja Singh, Ambassador Liu Chieh, and Mr. Khalidy for luncheon today to discuss pending questions with regard to the South West African resolution and the Ad Hoc Committee resolutions which were passed in the Fourth Committee.

[Here follows very brief discussion of the South West Africa resolution.]

We turned next to a consideration of the five resolutions passed in the Ad Hoc Committee. I spoke of our concern that action should be confined strictly within the limits of the Charter; for the weakening of the Charter must mean eventually the weakening of the United Nations. I spoke of the hope of the United States that all groups might find agreement and muster the necessary votes required in the plenary session upon the basis of a return to the five resolutions as originally passed in the Ad Hoc Committee before the Assembly meeting.

Raja Singh said that he could not agree to the proposal of returning to the five original Ad Hoc resolutions. He said that this would mean a wiping out of all the work which they had achieved in the Fourth Committee and that he could not persuade his own people to abandon everything they had stood and fought for in the Fourth Committee.

Ambassador Liu said that he felt the force of my presentation of the situation but that he could not sign in advance an agreement to go back to the original five Ad Hoc Committee resolutions because this would mean a repudiation of everything done in the Fourth Committee. He said that he might be found voting with us in the plenary session when it came to a vote, but that he could make no promises in advance. With respect to the Fifth Resolution, he said that he would be agreeable to the Resolution being changed so as to provide for an annual, rather than a permanent, committee; but that in his opinion it should be appointed, as was done last year, by the General Assembly rather than by the Fourth Committee.

Mr. Khalidy also said that he did not feel able to agree to come along with our group, although he might be found voting for at least some of our amendments.

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In the subsequent discussion, Mr. Khalidy expressed regret that the United States “was following such a reactionary course”. He said that there exists a feeling among many of the smaller states that the United States, instead of taking a position of independent leadership, was acting merely as one of the colonial powers opposing progress and blocking the promotion of the welfare of dependent peoples.

I explained that this was not at all the fact and sought to show that what the United States is seeking is a program to promote the welfare of non-self-governing peoples which is practical and which is constitutionally within the limits of the Charter. I said that the two alternatives were either, on the one hand, to frame measures which are constitutional and practical and for which sufficient votes can be mustered to secure their passage, or, on the other hand, to propose measures of an idealistic nature for which so few votes could be secured that the net result would be the passage of no resolution at all.

Our discussion was on a most friendly and rather intimate basis. I believe that some of the ideas which I expressed did reach their mark.

Francis B. Sayre