501.BB Palestine/5–748
Memorandum by Mr. Robert M. McClintock to the Under Secretary of State (Lovett)
I called Mr. Rusk at 2:15 p. m. today to say that a copy of USUN’s telegram 588, May 6,1 setting forth revised provisional draft of articles of truce, had been left with Mr. Clark Clifford at the White House for clearance with the President this afternoon.
I communicated to Mr. Rusk your suggestion that time may now have arrived for making official and public our proposals regarding [Page 926] a truce. I suggested that it might be possible to put our proposals on record before the Security Council this afternoon.
Mr. Rusk said that he thought if this line of action were adopted it would be preferable to have a session of the Security Council tomorrow or Monday for that purpose. He said the Council at its meeting today had already dropped the subject of Palestine; he had not yet officially communicated to the Jewish Agency our latest terms of truce; and the President of the Council, Ambassador Parodi of France, might feel that he were being disregarded if we rushed our statement into the Council today without first having consulted him. Mr. Rusk thought that he would like to talk to Parodi first and suggested that possibly Parodi as President of the Council could officially communicate our truce proposals to the other members of the Council with a notation that we had already given this draft to the Arab Higher Committee and the Jewish Agency.
I said that I thought there would be no objection to this procedure but that I thought a meeting of the Council should be held, at which time our own Representative would formally place on the record what the United States had done. I suggested that our statement should be tied in with the Security Council’s truce resolutions of April 1 and April 17, to make it clear that we were not by-passing the UN as the Jews have insinuated, but were acting in the spirit of these resolutions in our endeavor to make truce possible.
Mr. Rusk said that his appointment with Shertok had been postponed until 5:30 this afternoon and that he would communicate with me prior to that appointment in the expectation that White House clearance for our truce articles would have been received by that time.
On the question of immigration, Mr. Rusk said that the Arab Representatives in New York seemed enthusiastic at our latest formula. I checked again my understanding of this point which was as represented to me this morning by Mr. Rusk; namely, that during the period of the truce the present rate of immigration would continue at 1,500 Jews a month, leaving open to the parties and the British arrangements as to the disposal of the 20,000 Jews on Cyprus. Mr. Rusk felt that the British were in such a position vis-à-vis the Arabs that they could scarcely fail to accede to Arab demands with regard to keeping the Cypriote Jews in situ.
Mr. Rusk added that despite the fact that the proposal accepted yesterday by the General Assembly for the appointment of a neutral municipal commissioner in Jerusalem had from the outset been a British proposal for which the UK Delegation voted yesterday, instructions had today been received from London ordering the British to reverse their stand and to say that they would not appoint a commissioner for Jerusalem. (Mr. Wilkins reported separately from New York that apparently Bevin had sent a letter to this effect to Señor [Page 927] Arce, President of the General Assembly.) Although the press ascribed this reversal in position to Mr. Bevin, the British were making a lame attempt to make the High Commissioner for Palestine the scapegoat. I told Mr. Rusk that I did not see any reason in the world to let the British off on this one. They had invented the idea, fought for it, and voted for it, and we should insist that they honor this commitment.
- Not printed; it gave the text of the third provisional draft of the articles of truce. (501.BB Palestine/5–648). For the draft as approved by President Truman, see the circular telegram of May 7, infra. The approved articles followed closely the draft in telegram 588.↩