Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947, The American Republics, Volume VIII

711.252/5–1947

Memorandum by the Counselor of Embassy for Economic Affairs in Chile ( Dunn ) to the Ambassador in Chile ( Bowers )⁷⁸

Santiago , May 16, 1947.

This afternoon I called at the Chilean Foreign Office to talk to Messrs. Bernstein or Vergara⁷⁹ about the proposed Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation, and found them in conference together, so that I was able to get their joint views at the same time.

. . . . . . .

I then asked them frankly what their attitude toward the treaty was at this time. Mr. Bernstein said that until the results of the multilateral treaty negotiations at Geneva⁸⁰ were apparent, Chile would prefer not to discuss the broader treaty. Mr. Vergara then said that as a matter of fact Chile had always been afraid of such broad treaties. He said that former Ambassador Culbertson had proposed something of the same nature in 1927, and that they had turned it down. He went on to say that some apparently very innocuous and innocent looking article in such a treaty would often turn up later to haunt them, and that they preferred to make separate treaties covering the various matters involved and not combine them into such an all-inclusive document.

I argued that our proposed treaty was quite elastic and would provide a set of principles on which our relations could be based; that we were trying to negotiate a number of such treaties, and had hoped that Chile would be one of the first countries with which we could sign up; also that it would be to Chile’s interest to conclude such a treaty. I said that now that we were in such excellent practice as a result of our recently concluded bilateral aviation agreement,⁸¹ we should not lose the momentum we had acquired, but should continue our discussions on this new basis.

Mr. Vergara smiled and said that if it had taken us a week to negotiate the comparatively simple aviation agreement, it would take at least seven weeks of continuous work to do the broader treaty, and even then he doubted that we could reach an agreement on certain of its articles. He again said that they would prefer to await the results of the Geneva conference, as a number of the articles in the proposed treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation seemed to be embodied in the multilateral negotiations. He concluded by saying that if we were really interested in getting started with such a treaty, it would be necessary for Ambassador Bowers to speak about it to Foreign Minister Juliet, since the present views of the Foreign Office were as they had outlined them to me.

In view of this conversation, I deem it futile to press the matter further at this time, unless the Department gives instructions to the contrary. After the Geneva conference is over, however, further inquiries might then well be made.

W. E. Dunn

78. Copy transmitted to the Department by the Ambassador in his despatch 15, 297, May 19, 1947, not printed.
79. Germán Vergara Domoso, Legal and Economic Adviser of the Chilean Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
80. Negotiations that ended in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, signed October 1947. For documentation, see volume i . For text of the agreement, see Department of State, Treaties and Other International Acts Series (TIAS) No. 1700.
81. TIAS No. 1905.