811.24590/10–2546
Memorandum by the Assistant Chief of the Division of British Commonwealth Affairs (Richards) to the Deputy Director of the Office of European Affairs (Hickerson)
Attached is the New Zealand draft trusteeship agreement for Western Samoa as now revised by the New Zealand Government. This revision was handed to Mr. Hiss on Saturday.34
SPA is now preparing a “position paper” on this revision and has asked for our comments on Article X (4) which is much more general than what was originally proposed.35 Mr. Reid told Mr. Hiss orally that his Government felt that the original wording was too broad and that they “did not want to invite other powers” to share too much in the use of defence installations. He added, however, that his Government felt that they had such friendly relations with the US that we should have no conflict over the revised wording.
- On October 19 Mr. Reid, First Secretary of the New Zealand Legation, had handed to Mr. Hiss an aide-mémoire dated October 18 with the text of a revised draft trusteeship agreement for Western Samoa and a memorandum of comment on the draft, none printed except the excerpt in the following footnote. Memorandum of conversation of October 19 between Messrs. Hiss and Reid not printed.↩
- In the course of revision of the draft terms, Article IX (3) of the original draft had become Article X (4) in the revised draft. The revised text provided that the administering authority should be entitled “to take all such other measures in accordance with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations as are, in the opinion of the administering authority necessary to the maintenance of international peace and security and the defence of Western Samoa” (890.0146/10–1846).↩