501.BB Palestine/3–1748
Memorandum of Telephone Conversation, by Mr. Robert M. McClintock
Mr. Rusk1 inquired early this morning if the Department would have any objection should the approved United States tactical position [Page 730] on Palestine be presented to the Security Council, possibly at its next meeting on March 19, as a joint US, Chinese, and French proposal. He wished this point checked with Mr. Bohlen. I replied that offhand the suggestion seemed to be without objection, and later received a similar reaction from Mr. Bohlen.
In a later telephone conversation with Mr. Rusk the latter said that he and Mr. Ross had succeeded in persuading Ambassador Austin that the tactics reaffirmed in the Department’s top secret telegram No. 138 of yesterday should be adhered to. (At one point yesterday there seemed to have been considerable danger lest Ambassador Austin find himself in outright disagreement with his instructions and that he had been tempted at least to discuss this disagreement with the President.) Mr. Rusk went on to add that in conversation this morning with Ambassador Austin one or two modifications of the basic position, as set forth in the Department’s top secret telegram No. 107 of March 5, had commended themselves to Ambassador Austin and to Mr. Rusk. These modifications were to make clear in our presentation that the calling of a special session of the General Assembly to establish a United Nations trusteeship would be a temporary measure and without prejudice to whatever future settlement were arrived at by agreement between the peoples of Palestine. In other words, Ambassador Austin did not wish to knock partition on the head at this juncture but to leave that as one of a variety of possible solutions for the Palestine problem, which might be considered when the United Nations trusteeship for Palestine were terminated.
Needless to remark, the conversation which elicited this information was by no means as explicit as the foregoing paragraph.
Mr. Rusk said that if it were agreed that the three Powers jointly present this new suggestion it could be made to seem that the suggestions stemmed directly from their consultations pursuant to the Council’s resolution of March 5. I said that this was entirely in line with the basic instructions set forth in Deptel 107.
Mr. Rusk thought it would be wise if there were consultation with London, Paris, and Nanking. I agreed and suggested that USUN reduce its views to writing, for immediate transmission to the Department, which would consider them and in turn send telegrams to the three capitals mentioned.
I observed to Mr. Rusk that on the basis of John Rogers’ account in this morning’s Herald Tribune, we had come mighty close to the Gromyko line of favoring an out and out finding by the Security Council that the Arab States had been guilty of a threat to international peace and security in and around Palestine. I said that we had been exerting great efforts in the Middle East to bring the Arab Governments to a more conciliatory frame of mind. I wondered if Ambassador Austin in his speech might not in turn make some friendly reference [Page 731] to Faris el-Khouri’s statement yesterday to the effect that the Arab States would not interfere in subsequent fighting in Palestine so long as no other foreign force took part in it.
Mr. Rusk said that other members of the Council simply did not believe the statement of Faris el-Khouri. He said that Ambassador Austin would, as a minimum, insist on inserting a paragraph in his statement stressing the obligation of the Security Council under the Charter to maintain international peace and security, and citing the Articles of the Charter which gave it that power.
I said that I realized the Ambassador’s stern devotion to the Charter but that we had worked very hard in the Arab capitals to bring forth one little green sprig of tolerance out of the mould and that I would not wish to see it shrivel up under the hot blast of righteousness. Perhaps the Ambassador could in a fatherly way admonish both the Arabs and Jews to be good.
A meeting has been set up in Mr. Bohlen’s office for Thursday, March 18, at 11 a. m., to consider these proposals.
- At New York.↩