710 Consultation 4/7–1447
Memorandum by the Assistant Chief of the Division of Special Inter-American Affairs (Halle) to the Director of the Office of American Republic Affairs (Briggs)35
Brazil, having received formal requests from “two or three” unspecified non-American governments that they be represented by observers at the forthcoming Rio Conference, has asked the Governing Board of the Pan American Union what kind of reply it should make. I attended, on Saturday, July 12, a meeting of a committee of the Board to report on this question. The members of the Committee were: The Ambassador of Haiti (Chairman), the Ambassador of Honduras, the Representative of Brazil and the Representative of the United States. The Director General and Assistant Director were present.
The meeting opened with the distribution of the attached memorandum36 citing the results of previous considerations in the Inter-American System of the question whether observers should be admitted to inter-American conferences. As this memorandum shows, the Lima Conference of 1938 came to the conclusion that there was no need to raise the question of official observers since the meetings were public, while the Governing Board in 1944 decided that, for special reasons, a non-member state might be allowed to send an observer to a particular inter-American conference if the Governing Board decided so on the basis of a proposal to that effect by one of the members. Since Brazil was not making such a proposal, it appeared that the conclusion reached at Lima applied to this case and there was no problem.
The Brazilian was not at all satisfied, however, to accept the Lima decision as a basis for reply, considering that the Lima decision was unsatisfactory, that the world had changed since Lima, and that it would seem “very strange” to tell these non-American governments that they would not be permitted to send official observers. He made it quite plain that he, personally, hoped to see the Governing Board make a new decision that would permit observers to attend the Rio Conference. At one point, however, he said he had no instructions to this respect from his government but that he supposed his government would not be referring the question to the Governing Board if the Lima decision were considered satisfactory.
[Page 20]Other members of the Committee expressed the view that the question of admitting observers had implications of such fundamental importance that it should not be decided off the cuff by the Governing Board but should be dealt with, if at all, at the Bogotá Conference. The Brazilian was obviously not of this mind.
The Ambassador of Honduras37 then enthusiastically proposed and wrote out a resolution whereby each request from a non-member government to be represented by observers at the Rio Conference should be referred to the Conference itself for decision. The Representative of the United States was finally constrained to point out the danger that the Conference would devote its first week or ten days to an extended and bitter discussion of which non-American governments might or might not have official observers, with attendant newspaper publicity, confusion and bad feeling.
After these matters had been debated for a full 2 hours, the Director General saved the day with a proposal that in order that the members of the United Nations might be fully and officially informed of the developments and conclusions at the Conference, the United Nations Organization, i.e., Trygve Lie,38 should be invited to have an observer present. This would obviate any need for the appointment by individual United Nations of observers.
This solution, being acceptable to all (though accepted without enthusiasm by the Brazilian), the Director General immediately drafted a resolution calling for consideration at an International Conference of American States of a permanent decision with respect to observers of inter-American conferences and calling, in addition, for a formal invitation to the United Nations Organization to have an observer at Rio.
This draft resolution will be submitted to the Governing Board at the next meeting on July 16.