851g.00/2–2148
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Acting Assistant Chief of the Division of Southeast Asian Affairs (Lacy)
During the evening of February 20 Mr. Winckler1 expressed on his own motion his personal opinion that (a) France could not continue military operations in FIC much longer, as they had for the most part failed to accomplish their objectives and constituted a ruinous drain on French resources, and (b) that it might be desirable for France to accept the good offices of a Security Council committee such as that now operating in NEI, as he could see no other solution emerging from the present confusion. Mr. Winckler in elaborating this latter point said that he thought the French Government would be prepared to accept the sort of solution which the GOC had suggested in NEI. His only fear arose from the possibility that a GOC in Indochina might not be made up of powers “of the same disposition” as those which made up the GOC for Indonesia.
- Jean-Claude Winckler, First Secretary of the French Embassy.↩