501.BE/4–549

Memorandum of Conversation, by the Deputy Director of the Office of European Affairs (Thompson)

secret

Participants: Mr. Denis Allen, Counselor, British Embassy
Mr. Cooke, UKUN Delegation
Llewellyn E. Thompson

Mr. Allen said he had called Mr. Cooke to come in in order that he might repeat to me the description he had given Mr. Allen of the recent meeting of the Trustee-[ship] Council. Mr. Allen referred in this connection to the recent informal exchange of views between the Foreign Office and ourselves on methods of countering Soviet tactics in the Trustee Council.

The gist of Mr. Cooke’s report was that the situation was still far from satisfactory. He was exceedingly polite and correct and made numerous expressions of gratitude for the cooperation they had received from Mr. Sayre and Mr. Gerig, but it was clear that the British felt our Delegation was, on occasion, lending itself to the Soviet propaganda game in the Trustee Council. He mentioned that our Delegation had never in these meetings said anything critical of the Russians. He said our Delegation seemed to feel that despite Russian tactics the Trustee Council could be made to work the way it was originally intended. The British did not feel that this was the case.

I took this occasion to re-emphasize the importance we attached to the British coming up with positive and constructive policies as one of the best methods of countering Soviet tactics.

Part of the difficulty, Mr. Cooke indicated, lay in the fact that the new Soviet representative on the Council was an exceedingly able operator. He said the British would be very interested to see whether or not the Soviet Delegation used the same tactics against us as it had against them when the question of the Japanese Islands comes up.

I asked Mr. Cooke to contact Hayden Raynor1 in New York, since I was not familiar with the specific instances he had cited. I also said that we hoped to assign to our Delegation in New York an officer who was trained in Russian work and that I hoped he would be useful to our Delegation in matters of this kind.

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I wish to repeat here that the British were most correct in their approach and put very delicately what I have expressed bluntly in this memorandum.2

Llewellyn E. Thompson
  1. G. Hayden Raynor, Special Assistant to the Director of the Office of European Affairs.
  2. In a chit attached to this memorandum, addressed to the Assistant Secretary of State for United Nations Affairs (Rusk) and the Counselor of the Department (Bohlen) on April 8, Mr. Thompson wrote: “I am inclined to believe that the British have a real point here, and believe that we should check closely into this question, since Soviet propaganda can make great use in Africa and other trustee territories of well meaning statements made by our people in the Trustee [sic] Council. I will ask Mr. Raynor to follow these meetings and you may wish to say something to Sandifer [Durward V. Sandifer, Acting Director of the Office of United Nations Affairs] about it.” In a marginal notation Mr. Bohlen wrote: “I agree CEB”.