893.20 Mission/7–146: Telegram
The Acting Secretary of State to the Embassy in China
418. Provided General Marshall concurs, Emb authorized to make comments as follows on Chinese suggestions re alterations of draft agreement (Embtel 1073, Jul 1):
- (1)
- Following is suggested substitute Article 19:
“All communications relating to policy between the Chinese Govt and the Group shall be directed through the Ambassador of the United States of America to the Republic of China or, in his absence, the Chargé d’Affaires. This provision shall not be interpreted to preclude free communication between the Chairman and members of the Group and appropriate Chinese officials on technical matters pertaining to the functioning of the Group.”
- Comment: In view of restricted interpretation which could be given to phrase “all formal communications,” its use might tend to defeat this Govt’s expressed desire to have centralized policy control of all American activities in China rest with Ambassador.
- (2)
- Dept feels that suggested provision re recall of unacceptable
members of Group might appropriately be included in Article 16
by insertion of following sentence at end thereof:
“The Chinese Govt reserves the right to ask for the recall of any member of the Group in cases of incompetence or serious violation of Chinese law.”
- (3)
- A. Dept would prefer to retain Article 22 for following reasons: (1) Similar articles appear in military mission agreements with Brazil,47 Bolivia,48 Colombia49 and a number of other countries, and were this article eliminated, other countries concerned might cause [Page 839] embarrassment by asking that comparable provisions be eliminated from their agreements; and (2) it is considered desirable for Chinese to accept principle of exclusive US assistance even though in practice article would give us no added advantage, as in final analysis our only recourse to Chinese insistence on engaging third power assistance would be termination of agreement, authority for which is already contained in Article 4. Present wording of article preferred, but there is no objection to considering alternative wording more acceptable to Chinese. If Chinese insist, deletion will be considered, but Dept would desire obtain War and Navy concurrence before authorizing.
- B. Dept perceives no objection to deletion of Article 23. Selection of individual units to receive assistance and advice would, in any case, be the subject of negotiations between the Chinese and American authorities directly concerned, and US could in practice refuse assistance to unapproved units.
At instance of Navy Emb requested at appropriate time in course of negotiations to make following amendments to draft agreement:
Article 17. Final sentence should read as follows: “Should the deceased be a member of the Group, for special allowance purposes his services with the Group shall be considered to have terminated fifteen (15) days after his death.”
Article 25. First sentence should be broken up into two sentences, the first sentence ending in third line with word “practicable,” the next word “and” being deleted and the second sentence beginning with words “The Government”.