501.BB Palestine/2–2748
Mr. Robert M. McClintock to the Director of the Office of United Nations Affairs (Rusk), Temporarily at New York
Dear Dean: Enclosed is memo of your conversation this morning with Mr. Lovett,1 as seen from this end of the line.
I thought you might be interested to know for background purposes that Mr. Lovett set Loy Henderson straight on the future alternatives which confront the UN in the Palestine case.
Mr. Lovett said there was one possibility, which was that the SC would find that it could do nothing constructive on the Palestine problem; would call a special session on the GA to consider the matter anew; and that the Assembly would make a new recommendation for a solution along the lines of possibly a trusteeship. In this case the British might or might not be amenable to pressure designed to have them maintain law and order in Palestine for a while longer. [Page 665] However, we could not formulate policy on the assumption that the British would be thus amenable.
Another possibility, said Mr. Lovett, was that the SO would find (and indeed there seemed to be ample evidence on hand already) that the situation in Palestine constituted a threat to the maintenance of international peace and security. In this case and with the British pulling out between May 15 and August 1, the UN might find it necessary to send forces to Palestine to maintain international peace. If, in the meantime, nothing had occurred to change the Assembly’s recommendation of last November 29, we might find that the Palestine Commission would go to Palestine under the terms of that resolution and seek by negotiation to carry out the plan of partition with economic union. In that case it should be clear, however, that UN forces in Palestine were there to maintain international peace and not to enforce partition.
Mr. Lovett seemed to envisage clearly the possibility that some type of international force would have to be made available in Palestine by the UN, although he did not say as much in so many words.
- Supra.↩