500.A15A4 General Committee (Arms)/164: Telegram
The American Delegate (Wilson) to the Secretary of State
[Received March 27—7:11 a.m.]
1026. Plenary Committee on Manufacture and Trade and the Committee on Miscellaneous Provisions met yesterday and completed a general discussion of the principles of chapter 4. Beginning today there will be consideration of this chapter article by article.
Previous positions of the various governments were maintained today with perhaps more precision than before. The United Kingdom made it very clear that they could not accept supervision on the spot. While declaring Great Britain’s willingness to have automatic and permanent supervision with investigation on the spot in the event of a general convention of limitation the British representative indicated that the control features of the present draft were out of all proportion to the ends to be accomplished by such a convention. Italy and Poland supported the British point of view.
Fourteen states including our own delegation supported the draft project in varying degrees. They were Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, France, Spain, Yugoslavia, Russia, Belgium, Turkey, Czechoslovakia, Iran, Afghanistan, China. Certain states, notably Switzerland, [Page 38] suggested the possibility of compromise possibly by the elimination of inspection on the spot and retaining only supervision of documents at Geneva and in exchange therefor greater detail in publicity particularly with respect to numbers which at present is rejected both by Italy and the United Kingdom.