Office of the Historian

500.CC/6–945

Memorandum of Conversation, by Mr. O. Benjamin Gerig, Member of the United States Delegation

[San Francisco,] June 9, 1945.
Participants: The Secretary of State; Commander Stassen; Mr. Gerig.

Subject: The Proposals of the Soviet Delegation Concerning Trusteeship.

Commander Stassen told the Secretary that he and Mr. Gerig had just had a conversation with Ambassador Gromyko and Mr. Novikov [Page 1236] of the Soviet Delegation,88 in which the latter said that they could support the trusteeship document provided two conditions were met. First, that an additional sentence be added to Paragraph B 5, to be worded as follows:

“This paragraph should not be interpreted as giving grounds for delay or postponement of the negotiation and conclusion of the agreements for placing mandated and other territories, as provided for in paragraph 3, under the trusteeship system.”89

Second, that it should be understood between the United States and Soviet Governments that in case the Soviet Government should be proposed as the administering authority of some suitable trust territory—though he had no specific territory in mind—the United States Government would support the Soviet Government as eligible for such a post.

Secretary Stettinius said he thought both these points were entirely reasonable and that we could accede to their request. He said the additional sentence to Paragraph 5 was merely a clarification of the implied intent of that paragraph, to which Commander Stassen and Mr. Gerig agreed. Commander Stassen went on to say that in the Soviet view it counterbalanced what the Soviets regarded as too much emphasis in that paragraph on maintenance of the status quo eternally. The Soviet Delegation wanted to make certain that the subsequent agreements for placing territories under the system would not be unduly delayed.

Mr. Stettinius suggested that the second Soviet proposal—Soviet eligibility as a potential administering authority—might be discussed with Mr. Dunn, and Commander Stassen said he would try to see him as soon as possible. When the matter was explained to Mr. Dunn, there seemed to be no objection to meeting the Soviet request on this point.

  1. Memorandum of conversation, June 9, not printed.↩
  2. See Doc. 877, II/4/35, June 9, UNCIO Documents, vol. 10, p. 515.↩