741.51/9–1745: Airgram

The Minister to Syria and Lebanon (Wadsworth) to the Secretary of State

A–130. The Department will have noted the text of the important statement made by General de Gaulle to the London Times correspondent in Paris on September 965 last, dealing basically with Franco-British relations and inter alia with the two powers’ mutual interest in determining their relationships with the Arab countries in general and Syria in particular.

The passage of this statement which has occasioned particular concern in Syria and Lebanon read, in suggested translation, as follows:

“They should together help the countries of the Near East to determine their mutual relations—and they should frankly adjust their relations with the activities of those countries individually.”

Yesterday, September 15, the local press carried two important declarations made respectively by the Syrian Prime Minister, Faris Bey el-Khoury, and the Lebanese Prime Minister, Sami Bey es-Solh, commenting particularly on this quoted passage. They had previously met, together with their Foreign Ministers, on September 10 to consider general Franco-Levant relations. On September 14 the Foreign Ministers again met to pursue the earlier discussion and, in particular, to consider the general implications of this de Gaulle statement.

Faris Bey was reported by the press to have said, when questioned by local newsmen: 1) That France had been asked “to evacuate her [Page 1166] armed forces as speedily as possible from Syria and Lebanon”; and 2) That Syria would refuse “any special or privileged position on our territory to any government.”

He then made the following declaration:

“General de Gaulle has no business to make the rights of the Near East States and their sharing with Britain a subject for bargaining. De Gaulle knows that the Arab States, both together and separately, repudiate all decisions taken by others as they themselves are their own guardians, and no one has the right to make them a subject for bargaining.”

The Lebanese Prime Minister’s declaration is longer, carefully worded and lays particular emphasis on the broader theme (specially noted also in current local editorial comment on the subject) that the principles on which war was won and peace is to be made preclude that Great Powers concert together as in the past to dispose of the Arab Lands as “zones of influence.” In full text it reads, in suggested translation, as follows:

“We cannot but welcome any agreement that may be concluded between the two neighbour States, Great Britain and France, as such an agreement would constitute a new guarantee for world peace in general, and European peace in particular.

“On the other hand, we will in no way accept that Lebanon or Syria, or any other Near Eastern country, become a scene of competition for zones of influence between this or that group of Powers. We are all equal in rights and obligations, as stipulated in the United Nations Charter, which does not differentiate between the great and the small members of the said world organisation.

“We should like to remind the President of the Provisional Government of the French Republic he has forgotten an organisation which has its weight in the Orient, namely, the League of Arab States, which the United Nations Charter has recognised and regarded, together with similar regional organisations, as a further guarantee of world peace and security.

“We had hoped at this stage we are traversing, and after we had proved our good intentions, in spite of all the difficulties and obstacles, that the atmosphere would not be troubled by such declarations as the one in question, so that we may not be led to doubt the good intentions of others.”

George Wadsworth
  1. The London Times, September 10, p. 4. For French text, see The War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle: Salvation, 1944–1946, p. 558.