IO Files: US/S/1027
Memorandum of Conversation, by Mr. Edward P. Maffitt, Adviser, United States Mission at the United Nations
Ambassador Gross called on Sir Alexander this afternoon and told him that we had been approached by General McNaughton of Canada with the inquiry whether in our view it would serve any useful purpose to bring up implementation of Article 43 in the Security Council during his presidency. Mr. Gross added that he wanted to exchange views with the British and the French on this Subject and had in [Page 245] fact during the course of the day spoken with Baron de la Tournelle. He believed Sir Alexander had also been approached by McNaughton and had indicated to the General that the United Kingdom preferred to have no Security Council discussion of the subject at present.
Sir Alexander confirmed that he had so informed General McNaughton, and went on to say that he thought McNaughton was only consulting the three Western Powers “to save his conscience” and to be in the clear should anyone later on attempt to charge him with being remiss on this matter during his presidency. Sir Alexander said he had told McNaughton that the British not only do not want discussion, now, but do not even know how far the United Kingdom now wants implementation of Article 43. Anyway he did not think anything constructive would result from the discussion. He remarked that since the Article 43 problem was last under discussion, the Western Union arrangements had been developed. Sir Alexander said he wondered how Western Union and “the Fontainebleau thing” affected the Article 43 question. He turned to Laskey and told him to take this question up with the Foreign Office in London and incidentally to advise it of McNaughton’s démarche, which he said had not yet been reported to Whitehall.
Sir Alexander thought the United States, United Kingdom and France were not in a strong propaganda position on principles since we had been rigid in our insistence on our comparable-contributions thesis while the USSR at least had conceded that deviations from its principle of equality might on occasion be permitted by special decisions of the Security Council. This apparent flexibility gave the USSR a propaganda advantage over the three Western Powers and in addition the United States proposal on over-all strength furnished the USSR more material which could be and already had been used against us alone.
Ambassador Gross said that La Tournelle had made it clear that France would welcome Security Council discussion of the Article 43 Forces because the Article is one part of the Charter still to be implemented and because such implementation is a prerequisite to effective regulation and reduction of conventional armaments and weapons of mass destruction. The French however would not take the initiative and if the British and ourselves did not desire the the subject discussed this month, would not themselves bring it up. Sir Alexander remarked that this willingness to discuss Article 43 in the Security Council surprisingly enough came from the French military and was not shared by some of the French Security Council staff.
Ambassador Gross wondered if an informal discussion sometime later on between the United States, United Kingdom and French Missions here might not help to iron out those differences still separating the three powers and strengthen the Western position in any [Page 246] Security Council discussion which might arise. Sir Alexander thought such discussion might be useful and wondered whom the French would detail on the military side since General Billotte, their top Military Staff man, had suddenly and inexplicably departed for France a day or so ago.
Sir Alexander and Laskey had the impression that General McNaughton had by now dropped his preoccupation with the Article 43 matter and had turned to more pressing Security Council business, such as the forthcoming Kashmir case.
Ambassador Gross in summing up our position said that the United States is not abandoning its declared support for implementation of Article 43 but that Washington is considering the present situation and the relationship of conventional armaments and atomic energy with the Article. During this consideration it appeared unlikely that the United States would be prepared to discuss the Article in the Security Council.