Office of the Historian

724.3415/3377: Telegram (part air)

The Consul at Geneva (Gilbert) to the Secretary of State

Geneva, October 31, 1933—4 p.m.
[Received November 2—6:52 a.m.]

278. 1. Secretariat has today circulated a note from the Bolivian representative here under date of October 19 of which the following is a résumé:

(a)
The Bolivian Government attributes the failure of all previous negotiations to conclude an arbitral agreement to the circumstance that the parties have not agreed on a delimitation of the zone to be arbitrated and feels that the League Chaco Commission may encounter the same obstacle which would render its efforts entirely barren.
(b)
Refers to its note of October 12 on this head and expresses dissatisfaction with the Council Committee’s action in merely transmitting this communication to the Chaco Commission “without other [Page 365] form of procedure”. (See documents enclosed with Consulate’s despatch No. 702, Political).44
(c)
The Bolivian Government, “so long [as?] the powers of the Commission have not been properly defined will be compelled to ignore its labors”.

2. The Council Committee replied under date of October 27 in substance as follows:

(a)
The Commission is competent to deal with this as well as all other matters raised by the Bolivian Government inasmuch as the Council’s report of July 3 provides that the Committee should discharge its functions “taken as a whole as best it could, having regard to the situation it found on its arrival with the view to bringing about a speedy and permanent settlement of the dispute”.
(b)
The terms of reference of the Commission were established on July 3 and reaffirmed on August 3 and September 28 by a unanimous vote of the Council, including Bolivia and no change has since occurred in these terms (Consulate’s telegrams 178, August 4, 10 a.m.; and 204, September 29, 11 a.m.).
(c)
The Committee expresses surprise that Bolivia should now propose “to act in a manner completely at variance with the procedure which it has formally and repeatedly accepted”.

3. League reaction to the Bolivian communication touches on two points:

(a)
Although the Bolivian representative here is acting under instructions it is questioned to what extent the form in which the communication is couched represents the precise attitude of La Paz;
(b)
It is questioned to what extent the communication represents a definitive position of the Bolivian Government or to what degree it is an effort to influence the Commission to follow a particular line. In any event the Secretariat feels that the final revelation of the Bolivian position will not be made in Geneva but in South America.

4. The Council Committee has been informed by the Government of Paraguay that it has appointed Dr. Venancio Galeano as assessor to the Chaco Commission.

Gilbert
  1. Not printed.↩