Foreign Relations of the United States, 1946, The American Republics, Volume XI

835.796/2–1346: Telegram

The Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Winant) to the Secretary of State

secret

London, February 13, 1946—5 p.m.
[Received 5:30 p.m.]

1796. ReEmbs 1445, Feb 6, 1 p.m.⁵³ We have just received following letter from Perowne⁵⁴ in reply to our informal written and oral steps re Capt Hanson’s activities:

1. Thank you for your letter of the 28 Jan⁵³ which provided the ForOff with the first info it had received of the presence in this country of Capt Hanson. From some enquiries I have made, it appears that Capt Hanson who is described as head of Signal Section of the Argentine Air Force, arrived here recently unannounced, but that he has shown no interest in acquiring aircraft of any kind. We should not, I need hardly say, give any encouragement to any requests he might make for the acquisition of military aircraft, since such acquisition would be clearly contrary to the understanding which we came to with you last Oct and which is of course still in force on the subject of the directive which would govern the competent Govt depts in considering requests from Argentina for munitions and kindred articles.

2. This directive which was quoted in the aide-mémoire which our Washington Embassy communicated to the SD⁵⁵ under cover of Lord Halifax’s letter to Mr. Byrnes of the 28 Oct last⁵⁶ states:

“While HM Govt are in present circumstances opposed to the supply to Argentina, or to private Argentine firms, of any arms or munitions of war or other goods particularly adapted for warlike uses, they would have no objection to the supply to Argentina of articles such as are generally of a civilian character, although they may be capable of military use.”

As the Embassy made clear at the same time, we regarded as articles of a civilian character aero-engines, training aircraft, civil aircraft, and all aircraft not suitable for combat. As the Emb further stated, the policy implied by the directive involved a very considerable sacrifice of British interests and it represents I can assure you the limit to which HM Govt felt, after the most careful and sympathetic consideration, they could reasonably go to meet the requests concerning exports to Argentina addressed to them up to that time by your govt. I fear therefore that we cannot now take steps to interrupt any discussions which may be proceeding between the Argentine authorities and firms on the one hand and British exporters or depts on the other, concerning the export of articles which do not fall within the precise scope of our Oct understanding.

3. In any case we should doubt whether the interruption of such discussions would influence the electoral situation in Argentina. You will recollect that in Nov 1944 your Govt basing itself on political considerations, addressed to us an urgent request that our current meat negotiations with Argentina should be suspended.⁵⁷ We deferred to this request despite the disadvantages, and even risk, to ourselves from doing so. This suspension as far as we were able to judge in no way influenced the Argentine political situation, and the definite results were to involve us in considerable additional expense and to improve the general bargaining position of the Argentines when the time came for the resumption of negotiations.

4. The position as regards the trainer aircraft referred to in your letter is that a contract was signed some time ago by the Miles Co for the supply of 150 reconditioned Magisters to the civil aviation authorities with Bennequin Alo Co, Buenos Aires, as the intermediaries. (This is by the bye the only contract yet signed for the supply of aircraft to Argentina). Two sample reconditioned Magisters have arrived in Argentina. If present arrangements held, further deliveries will take place at intervals between March and Sept next. You will thus see that no further trainers will in fact be delivered until after the Argentine elections have been held. This should meet the point in the second paragraph of your letter.

5. At the end of your letter you mention that State Dept feels that in making the request you have put forward it is not asking any greater concessions from us than have been requested by us from you in connection with shipments to Spain. I think there may be some misunderstanding here. In reply to an enquiry made on our instructions by our Embassy at Washington last May as to the SD’s views re the supply of arms and military equipment to Spain, the SD, in a memorandum written at beginning of July⁵⁸ replied inter alia that they saw no objection to the supply to the Spanish Goyt of engines or [for?] training aircraft and complete training aircraft, excepting advanced training aircraft and engine parts thereof. It is true that in response to subsequent enquiries on the subject by George, Harvey, in a letter to him of the 30 Oct last, stated that we were at that time contemplating sending instructions to our Embassy at Washington to give a further explanation of our views to the State Department re the export of military equipment to Spain, and in doing so to ask whether the US Govt would be prepared to join with us in prohibiting the export to Spain of elementary training aircraft and engines and parts thereof. In the event, however, we subsequently decided not to make any communication to the SD on these lines. We did indeed decide ourselves to prohibit the supply from this country of any kinds of training aircraft (or engines or parts thereof) intended for the Spanish armed forces but bearing in mind the fact that the State Dept had already made their position clear in their memorandum of last July, we decided not to press the State Dept to follow suit.

6. I feel that I ought to take this opportunity to mention in conclusion that we do not regard Spain and Argentina as exactly parallel cases. Thus it would not in our opinion follow that because we thought a certain kind of treatment appropriate in one case the same treatment would necessarily be appropriate in the other.

Sent Dept as 1796; Buenos Aires 4; Rio de Janeiro 3.

Winant

53. Not printed.
54. J. V. T. W. T. Perowne, Head of the South American Department of the British Foreign Office.
53. Not printed.
55. State Department.
56. Not printed, but see Department’s aide-mémoire of November 15, 1945, Foreign Relations, 1945, vol. ix, p. 555.
57. For documentation on relevant aspects of British policy with respect to Argentina, see Foreign Relations, 1944, vol. vii, p. 288 ff.
58. Not printed.