501.BB/10–3146: Telegram
The Secretary of State to Senator Austin
262. USdel. for Gadel. Reference your telegram 741 of October 31, 9 p.m.50 Confirming the telephone message from Hiss to Dulles and Gerig of today, Department believes Soviets and other Delegations should be told that if members interested in particular trusteeship agreements do not accept our proposal to waive for purposes of this Assembly claims to be states directly concerned and attempt is made to have Assembly define this term we will take the position that no state other than the mandatory should be determined by the Assembly to be a state directly concerned in the case of any of the proposed agreements. We would accordingly vote against any proposed general [Page 671] principle of interpretation inconsistent with this view and would also vote against the designation of any individual member state, other than the mandatory in each case, as a state directly concerned. Department considers the Charter can appropriately so be construed and feels strongly that this is the only practicable interpretation if the issue is forced on the Assembly. Any other interpretation would be an unnecessary extension of the veto principle which has no place in the deliberations of the General Assembly.
It seems to us that the mandatory powers should be willing not to oppose us on this issue for the reason that it leaves open to each mandatory the privilege of consulting such other states as it desires and refusing to give its consent to any amendment proposed by the General Assembly which it is unable to agree to or which is inacceptable to any of the states the mandatory may itself consider bound to regard as states directly concerned.
In the event, which the Department Considers unlikely, that the Assembly should nonetheless designate one or more particular states as directly concerned in any given trusteeship agreement, Department will consider position the United States should take with respect to possible assertion by it of a right to be similarly designated as a state directly concerned. Our present position is that we are prepared to waive for the purposes of the present Assembly our claims to be a state directly concerned and we urge all other member states to do likewise. If this appeal is rejected by any member we urge the Assembly to refuse to designate any state other than the respective mandatories. If, nonetheless, the Assembly does proceed to designate one or more additional states as directly concerned we will have to consider our own position as a possible claimant in the light of such action, which we will consider unwise, by the Assembly.