851G.00/12–849: Telegram
The Ambassador in France (Bruce) to the Secretary of State
5166. Foreign Office note December 6 initialed by Schuman contains answers Department’s October 15 questions to Bonnet. Original by despatch.1 Rough translation follows:2
[Page 104]I. The Franco-Vietnamese, Franco-Laotian, and Franco-Cambodian agreements will be submitted for approval to the Assemblies in the near future.
Since the details of the ratification procedure have not yet been decided, they will be communicated to the Embassy later.
The ratification of these agreements by Parliament will not imply, however, the “legal creation” of the states with which France has signed them. These states already exist. Ratification will merely confirm (consacrer) the essential points of the new regime of independence granted to these states.
(Embassy comment: While complete information not available Foreign Office when note drafted, Letourneau3 tells me decision now reached submit Parliament three agreements under cover single bill and in interest speed not wait to include supplementary accords to March 8 document.)
II. The supplementary agreements presently being negotiated are to be signed at Saigon by the chief of the Vietnamese Government and the High Commissioner of France for Indochina. These agreements must, in principle, be signed at the same time and before the end of the year. It is possible, however, that if a delay occurs in the conclusion of one of them, the accords already agreed upon will be signed first.
III. The agreement of March 8, 1949, refers to qualified Vietnamese authorities without specifying what authorities will be called upon to act. The decision as to who these authorities shall be constitutes in effect a domestic Vietnamese problem whose solution will derive from the constitution of that country which at the present has only provisional institutions.
Under the circumstances, it appears that the French Government cannot inform the US Government of the rules which will result from the free determination of Vietnam. However, the general tendencies of political and constitutional order allow one to suppose that a representative assembly of Vietnam will be called to pronounce itself on these agreements.
IV. The territory of Cochin-China has been part of the associated Vietnam State since the law of June 4, 1949, and by virtue of its text.
The law of June 4, 1949, was passed pursuant to Article 75 of the constitution of the French Republic which provides for changes of status within the French Union as the result of a law passed after consulting the territorial assemblies and the Assembly of the French Union. The territorial assembly of Cochin-China was organized by the law of March 14, 1949.
V. The character of the consultation which took place can only be appreciated in the light of the disturbed situation which then prevailed in Cochin-China.
The French Government did not wish to use the state of disorder in Cochin-China as a pretext for delaying the reuniting of this territory to Vietnam. On the one hand, in fact, the demand for Vietnamian unity constituted such a grounds for agitation that one risked never achieving pacification if the unity question was made a condition previous. On the other hand, the sentiment for Vietnamese unity seemed strong and unanimous enough for the French Parliament to draw the proper [Page 105] conclusion, regardless of the imperfections of the representation charged with its expression in the territorial assembly.
VI. In the interest of reestablishing normal conditions in Vietnam, the French Government is dealing with H. M. Bao Dai, as the most qualified Vietnam representative in the present situation, to reestablish peace in that country under the authority of a government of its own and whose interests are truly national.
The political regime of Vietnam organized under the authority of H. M. Bao Dai is still only provisional and holds itself out as such. The working out of definite institutions for Vietnam will keep pace with the progress in the task of pacification and unification to which this provisional government has set for itself. It will be the concern of the future constitution of Vietnam, after the population has been able freely to express itself, to decide on a monarchical or republican form of government. At that moment Bao Dai will be invested with such titles (qualités) as the Vietnamese nation may confer upon him after it emerges from its difficulties.
VII. Article 4 of the Charter of the United Nations provides that all peaceful states which accept the obligations of the Charter and, in the judgment of the organization are capable and disposed to fulfill them, may become members of the United Nations.
Without doubt the disturbances in Indochina and the delays necessary to draft treaties have not, so far, permitted the French Government to consider that the Associated States of Indochina can fulfill all the conditions set forth in the above-mentioned Article 4.
Nevertheless, the solutions already reached in Laos and Cambodia, as well as the Franco-Vietnamian settlement concluded by the agreement of March 8 and its expected consequences, give the French Government great hopes of being able to present the candidacy of the three Associated States of Indochina to the UN Organization in the near future.
Sent Department 5166; repeated London 907.