501.BD/11–2146
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Acting Director of the Office of European Affairs (Hickerson)
Mr. Reuchlin, Counselor of the Netherlands Embassy, came in to see me at his request today and made an eloquent plea for U.S. support [Page 235] for the Netherlands in the pending election of states to the Economic and Social Council. In addition to an excellent restatement of Netherlands general qualifications on economic grounds for the place, Mr. Reuchlin stated that there were important political reasons why the United States should support the Netherlands. He said that the U.S. Government is interested in seeing the Netherlands Parliament approve the recently initialled agreement with the Indonesian leaders64 and he fears that if we do not support the Netherlands for ECOSOC, it may cost the agreement votes in Parliament. I told Mr. Reuchlin that I felt that the Netherlands had an excellent case for membership on general grounds but that his complicated political arguments frankly left me a little cold.
I told Mr. Reuchlin that last night Senator Austin had informed Mr. van Kleffens that the U.S. would vote for Turkey and Byelo-Russia on the next ballot and that thereafter we would consider ourselves completely free to vote in any way we considered wise. Mr. Reuchlin brightened perceptibly and said that he assumed that this meant that we would vote for the Netherlands. I replied that his assumption was incorrect; that the statement meant exactly what it said and that our vote would depend upon circumstances at the moment.
- For documentation on this subject, see vol. viii, pp. 787 ff.↩