795.00/12–1750
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Assistant Secretary of State for United Nations Affairs (Hickerson)
| Participants: | Mr. Hickerson |
| Sir Keith Officer, Head of Australian U.N. Delegation | |
| BNA—Mr. Shullaw |
Sir Keith Officer, the head of the Australian U.N. Delegation, called on me today at his request to discuss U.N. strategy with respect to Korea. He said he believed it was important to give the cease-fire committee sufficient time to attempt to achieve its objectives, and that it was also important that the First Committee adjourn for a few days to provide the proper atmosphere for the committee to carry on its work. Sir Keith said that recriminations in the First Committee could damage whatever chances the cease-fire committee might have of accomplishing anything. He also said that Mr. Pearson believed that the committee should not confine itself to negotiations with General Wu’s delegation but should be willing to transfer its negotiations, if need be, to Peking. In response to a question from me, he said that he thought the three negotiators might require ten days or two weeks to determine whether or not their efforts would be [Page 1563] successful. I told Sir Keith that we would be agreeable to an adjournment of the First Committee.
In a discussion of our long range U.N. strategy on the question of Korea, I told Sir Keith that in the event cease-fire efforts failed and the Chinese Communists continued their operations in Korea, we believed it essential that they be branded as aggressors. I mentioned in this connection Mr. Spender’s speech of December 10 in which he stated that we could not afford to distinguish between aggression by a small power and aggression by a large power and that we should not water down the principle of no appeasement by the terms of any agreement reached with the Chinese Communists.
I told Sir Keith that after branding the Chinese Communists as aggressors we favored requesting the Collective Measures Committee to recommend effective action which members of U.N. might take individually and collectively. I mentioned such possibilities as severance of diplomatic relations, financial measures, trade restrictions and possibly a blockade of the Chinese coast. I told Sir Keith that in the handling of this problem we had to seek a course of action between two extremes. We certainly do not intend to become involved in an all-out war with China—that is what the Russians would like to see happen. On the other hand we cannot afford to simply evacuate Korea now that a larger aggressor has joined the North Koreans, except, of course, as a result of military necessity. I said that in branding the Chinese Communists as aggressors we should also do what we have not done up to the present, expose the Soviet Union as the instigators of this aggression.
Sir Keith mentioned that he had been very much disturbed by a conversation earlier in the week between Ambassador Makin and Mr. Rusk on the question of Formosa. He said that he understood Mr. Rusk had stated that one of our interests in keeping Formosa out of Chinese Communists hands arose from our belief that Chiang Kai-shek might return to the Chinese mainland by the choice of the Chinese people. He said that he was certain that Chiang Kai-shek was thoroughly discredited and would never be recalled by the Chinese people. Mr. Shullaw said that he had been present at the conversation to which Sir Keith referred and that he was certain Mr. Rusk had not meant to imply that this was a major point in his review of the political, diplomatic and strategic significance of Formosa. Mr. Shullaw said that he understood it to be a casual reference and recalled that Mr. Rusk had used the phrase “choice by disgust” to describe such an eventuality.