Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947, General; The United Nations, Volume I

IO Files: US/A/C.4/54

Memorandum by the Principal Executive Officer of the United States Delegation ( Sandifer ) to All Political Officers

confidential

[ New York ,] October 8, 1947.

It would be appreciated if Political Officers would explain to other Delegations, but without campaigning for their support, the views of the United States Delegation with respect to the principal items before the Fourth Committee. Controversy has arisen over each item with regard to the interpretation of Chapters XI and XII of the Charter. The “anti-colonial” Delegations have sought consistently to stretch and misinterpret the Charter in order to embarrass the Members which administer trust territories or other non-self-governing territories. The United States Delegation has endeavored to resist every effort made to distort Chapters XI and XII, and to put forward constructive concrete proposals.

Draft Trusteeship Agreement for Nauru ¹

The Soviet Delegation has raised the question of the “states directly concerned”² in Nauru. Our Delegation will take the same position it did last year, namely, that there is no need under Article 79 of the Charter to define the “states directly concerned”, since every Member will have full opportunity at the General Assembly to put forward its views on the draft terms of trusteeship. Only the Members which are submitting the agreement—Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom—need to be considered “states directly concerned” for the purposes of Article 79. Approval of the Nauru agreement without specification of the “states directly concerned” will, of course, not prejudge the rights of any state to claim to be a “state directly concerned” in relation to subsequently proposed trusteeship agreements or any alteration or amendment of the Nauru agreement.

The Soviet Delegation has also argued that the administering authority of a non-strategic trust territory cannot establish bases there without the consent of the Security Council. The United States Delegation will maintain, as it did last year, that Article 84 of the Charter makes it clear that the administering authority of any trust territory, whether a strategic area or a non-strategic area, is obligated not only to provide for local defense and the maintenance of law and order, but also to ensure that the trust territory shall play its part in the maintenance of international peace and security. It may be noted that the Article of the Nauru agreement relating to defense is identical with that of the New Guinea agreement approved by the Assembly last year.

The Indian Delegation has proposed the inclusion of a new article which would provide that the present agreement should remain in effect for a specific period, and then be subject to review. Similar proposals last year were opposed by the United States, and defeated, on the ground that the Charter does not require a time-limit on a trusteeship agreement and that, in any event, termination of a trusteeship agreement is possible at any time upon agreement between the administering authority and the General Assembly.³

South West Africa ⁴

Mr. Dulles has stated in Committee 4 (USUN Press Release No. 253) that while there is very little difference between the Danish and Indian resolutions on South West Africa,⁵ our Delegation favors the Danish resolution for the following reasons:

(a) the Indian resolution implies that a mandatory power is required by the Charter to submit a trusteeship agreement for a mandated territory;

(b) the Indian resolution includes a time-limit for the submission of a trusteeship agreement for South West Africa; and

(c) the Danish resolution provides a means by which the report on South West Africa can be considered by the United Nations.

Our Delegation has consistently taken the position that Article 77 of the Charter does not require any Member to place any territory under trusteeship.⁶ This is, in our view, the clear intention of the San Francisco Conference and the only tenable interpretation of the; Charter. This point of view has been supported by a relatively small number of Members, while the contrary view has been advocated by the Soviet bloc, the Arab Delegation, and several Latin American delegations. While the Indian resolution does not state specifically that the Charter requires the submission of a trusteeship agreement?, its language implies this so clearly that our Delegation cannot vote for the resolution.

While the Danish resolution requests South Africa to submit a trusteeship agreement “soon”, the Indian resolution urges this action by the next session. It would be desirable to avoid setting a dead-line in order that this question will not have to be debated in even sharper form next year.

Committee 4 has debated at considerable length the question as to what should be done with the report on South West Africa already submitted by South Africa. Our Delegation and many others have taken the position that this report cannot be considered as falling under Article 73(e) of the Charter, since South West Africa still has a special status as a mandated territory. On the other hand, it is difficult to argue that this report should be forwarded to the Trusteeship Council, particularly without the consent of South Africa, since the Council’s functions are limited to trust territories. A desirable compromise might be a consideration of the report by the Fourth Committee, as originally suggested by Mr. Dulles,⁷ or, as proposed in the Danish resolution, by a Subcommittee patterned on the Trusteeship Council, but including the Union of South Africa.⁸

Report on the “Ad Hoc” Committee on Information Transmitted Under Article 73(e)

As Ambassador Sayre has stated in the Fourth Committee (USUN Press Release 244 and 251) the United States is genuinely concerned about the political, economic, and social advancement of all non-self-governing territories to the end that they may achieve the form of independence or self-government which they are desirous and capable of maintaining. The United States is opposed, however, to seeing assimilation of Chapter XI of the Charter to Chapter XII, which would result in the United Nations’ being given the same powers of supervision over non-self-governing territories as it exercises over trust territories. Indeed, we feel that efforts of the “anti-colonial” power to interpret Chapter XI so as to imply that the administering powers do not really have full sovereignty or jurisdiction, and that the United Nations can enforce certain “obligations”, can only impair the fulfillment of the true purposes of Chapter XI.

This effort to distort Chapter XI of the Charter will be manifested in several different ways. The Soviet Delegation has announced that it will introduce proposals, which were defeated in the Ad Hoc Committee, by which the General Assembly would send visiting missions to non-self-governing territories and would receive petitions relating to such territories. Moreover, the Soviet and other Delegations will attempt to amend Resolutions 1 and 3 proposed by the Ad Hoc Committee to state that the transmission of information on political conditions is required under Article 73 (e) of the Charter. Our Delegation will take the position that while the United States is willing voluntarily to transmit information on governmental institutions in territories under its administration, it cannot accept the views that transmission of such information is compulsory, or that it should be analyzed by the Secretary-General.

The last paragraph of Resolution 2 proposed by the Ad Hoc Committee recommends that the Secretary-General may also use, under defined conditions, official publications and documents published by intergovernmental or scientific bodies. It further recommends that the Secretary-General may also use, for purposes of comparison, comparable official, statistical material about sovereign states. For your background information, this last paragraph was inserted by the administering states in the Ad Hoc Committee, in order to provide a counter-move against the “anti-colonial” powers. The latter will make strenuous efforts to remove this last paragraph, since it may cause them embarrassment, by comparing conditions in non-self-governing territories with those in neighboring independent states. The Delegation will resist any effort to delete this paragraph on the ground that, if it is desired to provide comparable data for scientific purposes, the comparison should be on as broad a basis as possible.

Indian Resolution on Placing Non-Self-Governing Territories Under Trusteeship

The Delegation of India has submitted a resolution⁹ which proposes that the Members which administer territories referred to under Article 77(c) of the Charter should place under trusteeship such of those territories as are not to be given immediate self-government. The Delegation will vote against this resolution on the ground that it implies that submission of trusteeship agreements for these territories is compulsory rather than voluntary under the Charter, and that the United States is not prepared to place under trusteeship any of the territories which it administers. A position paper (US/A/C.4/53) on the subject is being circulated today for consideration by the Delegation.¹⁰

1. For documentation regarding the conclusion of the first trusteeship agreements in 1946, see Foreign Relations, 1946, vol. i, pp. 544 ff.
2. The issue of “states directly concerned” is discussed in detail in the documentation cited in footnote 1 above.
3. The proposed Nauru trusteeship agreement was approved by the General Assembly on November 1 after a relatively uneventful passage through the Fourth Committee, and the General Assembly, the Soviet Union making the same reservations as with the trusteeship agreements in 1946; see GA (II), Fourth Committee, pp. 25–28, 98–104, 108 and 112–133 (annex 3 and appendages), and United Nations, Official Records of the General Assembly, Second Session, Plenary Meetings, vol. i, pp. 569 ff. (hereafter cited as GA (II), Plenary, vol. i).
4. In a resolution of December 14, 1946, which had the support of the United States, the General Assembly had requested the Union of South Africa not to incorporate the mandated territory of South West Africa into the Union, and further had recommended that the Union Government place the territory under the United Nations trusteeship system. For the legislative history of this resolution, see GA (I/2), Fourth Committee, Part III, pp. 99 ff.; and United Nations, Official Records of the General Assembly, First Session, Second Part, Plenary Meetings (hereafter cited as GA (I/2), Plenary), pp. 1559 and 1560, annex 76, and pp. 1323 ff. On September 25, 1947, the South African member of the Fourth Committee had informed the Committee that although the Union Government would not submit to a trusteeship agreement it would, in respect of its administration of South West Africa, “maintain the status quo in the spirit of the Mandate” (GA (II), Fourth Committee, p. 4). The South African Government, he said, “would transmit information annually. Information relating to 1946 was now in the hands of the Secretary-General” (ibid., p. 4).
5. On October 1, India and Denmark submitted to the Fourth Committee resolutions that were in general agreement substantively, both calling upon the Union Government to place South West Africa under the trusteeship system; for texts, see GA (II), Fourth Committee, pp. 197 and 200, annexes 3h and 3l respectively.

6. The summary record of Mr. Dulles’ statement of the U.S. position to Subcommittee 2 of the Fourth Committee on November 28, 1946, reads as follows:

   “The placing under trusteeship of former mandated Territories was not compulsory. It had been acknowledged in London [in January–February 1946] that the Charter allowed for other solutions, for instance, independence, as in the case of Transjordan.…” (GA (I/2), Fourth Committee, Part III, p. 49)

7. Mr. Dulles had made this suggestion to the Fourth Committee on the first day of its consideration of the subject of South West Africa, on September 25. (GA (II), Fourth Committee, p. 4)

8. For a summary of the legislative history of the South West Africa question subsequently in the Fourth Committee and in a subcommittee of the Fourth Committee, see GA (II), Plenary, vol. ii, pp. 1537 ff., annex 13, entitled “Consideration [by the Fourth Committee] of proposed new trusteeship agreements, if any: question of South West Africa.” After considering the original Indian and Danish resolutions with a number of amendments, a subcommittee drafted two revised resolutions which, except for the presence of a more rigid time-limit clause in the revised Indian resolution, were identical in every respect, including omission of the “clear intention” clause in the original Indian resolution. Over the opposition of the United States and others, the Fourth Committee adopted (27–20–4) the revised Indian resolution, together with a Polish amendment that restored the preambular paragraph stating that it was the clear intention of the Charter that mandated territories should be placed under trusteeship.

   In the General Assembly’s consideration of the resolution recommended by the Fourth Committee (the revised Indian resolution), the United States strongly supported two amendments offered by Denmark that were designed to eliminate the “clear intention” clause and to effect a more flexible statement of a time-limit. (For text of Ambassador Sayre’s statement in plenary meeting, see GA (II), Plenary, vol. i, pp. 577 ff.) The United States also requested that the issue be voted on as an important question under Article 18 of the Charter, requiring a two-thirds vote in approval (ibid., p. 581). The revised Indian resolution as amended by the Danish amendments was approved by the General Assembly on November 1 (41–10–4).

9. For text, see GA (II), Fourth Committee, pp. 217–218, annex 5a.
10. Not printed.