London Embassy Files: Lot 59 F 59: 320 FMC
The United States Delegation at the Tripartite Preparatory Meetings to the Secretary of State
Secto 144. 1. Tripartite meeting May 4 of Subcommittee A1 considered (1) document TRI/P/10 draft text NAT machinery (Secto [Page 907] 85 May 22) and (2) revision of draft directive from Atlantic Council (Secto 107 May 33). Draft directive will be subject of separate msg.4
2. NAT Machinery. At suggestion of Perkins first 45 words of text quoted in Secto 85 beginning “It is clear” and continuing through “govts are now confronted” deleted and following text substituted: “At its meeting on September 17, 1949, the North Atlantic Council determined that arrangements for its own organization should not go beyond those essential for essential purposes. It was always contemplated that the arrangements approved at that time would have to be expanded as the work of the Council progressed. It is now clear that additional arrangements are required in order to permit the Council to be able to deal with the problems confronting it.” Begin new sentence and insert “therefore” as third word and after regularly “in order to” so that it reads “There is therefore a need for the Council to be so organized as to be able to meet regularly in order to give consideration to a wide range of problems.”
3. Discussion based primarily on consideration Brit redraft of TRI/P/10 (Secto 85) proposing (a) omission of word “executive” in describing organization to be established and (b) deletion of subpara (a) and substitution of two subparas (a) and (b) of which texts tentatively agreed upon given below.
4. Jebb explained Brit desire omit word “executive” because of special meaning in English. He made the point over and over again that in English sense use of word “executive” would be interpreted as giving organization functions or power it was not intended to have, for in last analysis only govts could execute the decisions of the Council.
5. Alphand5 was equally emphatic that without the word “executive” draft in French was greatly weakened. He expressed fear that Brit desire to delete “executive” indicated that there was not real agreement as to concept organizations as Fr understood it was to have powers of its own operating under the control and direction of the Council. Jebb reassured him that Brit were in agreement on character of organization. Perkins agreed some word needed before organization. It was therefore agreed to indicate absence of agreement by putting word executive in brackets in the sentence which begins “The Council thus strengthened will establish the necessary [executive]6 organization which operating under the control and direction of the Council.”
[Page 908]6. The paragraph beginning “The main tasks of the Council and its executive organization shall be” and subpara (a) were changed to read as follows: “The Council will among other things (a) study the interrelationship of the various plans prepared for the defense of the North Atlantic area [taking into account their economic, financial and political aspects]7 and ensure the coordination of the work of the Defense Committee, the Defense, Finance and Economic Committee and all other bodies established under the North Atlantic treaty organization, (b) recommend to govts the steps necessary to ensure that effect is given to the coordinated plans prepared for defense of the North Atlantic area.” These two subparas (a) and (b) were worked out in the meeting on the basis of the Brit proposal submitted and replace subpara (a) of the draft contained in Secto 85. Subparas (b) (c) and (d) remain unchanged except for the deletion of the first word “to” in each case because of the altered grammatical structure but are re-lettered and ‘become subparas (c) (d) and (e) of the draft accepted provisionally.
7. In the discussion of subpara (a) of the Brit proposal Jebb stressed that the work of the Council was to sudy implications of plans and coordinate them not to review individual plans (a concept which it might be difficult to persuade a defense or finance minister to accept). Both Alphand and Jebb pointed out that ministers of respective countries had not been consulted and therefore that even the language agreed upon tentatively in subcommittee might not be acceptable at ministerial level.
8. The phrase in subpara (a) “taking into account their economic, financial and political aspects” was included at the instance of Alphand. As Brit and US felt such limitation was unnecessary it was included in brackets for reference to the ministers.
9. We reserved our position in general at end of discussion.
10. Text with amendments indicated above will be submitted to tripartite Plenary May 5.8
- The Second meeting of Subcommittee A was held in the India Office at 11:00 a. m.↩
- Supra.↩
- Not printed; the French draft was given the conference designation TRI/P/11.↩
- Secto 143, infra.↩
- Hervé Alphand, Director General for Economic Affairs of the French Foreign Ministry.↩
- Brackets appear in the source text.↩
- Brackets appear in the source text.↩
- Regarding the tripartite plenaries on May 5 and 6, see editorial note, p. 902.↩