Office of the Historian

Editorial Note

On November 9, 1951, McGhee and Kopper had a final talk with Malik before his departure from Washington for Paris as a member of the Lebanese Delegation to the United Nations General Assembly. Most of the conversation reflected United States concern over abrogation of the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Agreement and rejection by Egypt of the Middle East Command proposals. For a summary of this portion [Page 1013] of the conversation, see the extracts of the memorandum of conversation by Gnade, November 9, page 419.

The only reference in the memorandum to United States-Lebanese relations appeared in the following paragraph:

“Turning to United States-Lebanese relations, Mr. McGhee asked that Dr. Malik tell Foreign Minister Helou of his deep concern at the many difficulties which had recently arisen in Lebanese-United States common problems. He cited ten points on which there are outstanding differences—points of no enormous importance and which could be easily worked out for the common benefit. Such an uncooperative attitude, he felt, was unbecoming to two countries with such close connections, and he himself was sharply distressed that relations between the two countries were apparently so poor. He did not understand how this could be when President Khouri, Dr. Malik himself, and other Lebanese leaders were always so cordial in their conversations, and the Lebanese ties to this country were so close. Despite this cordiality and these ties, the Lebanese Government actions—and lack of action—contradicted the apparent good feeling. During Mr. McGhee’s two and one-half years in office he had given earnest and sympathetic interest to Arab problems—refugees, Clapp mission,1 MSP, TCA, MEC, and so on—but all the United States gets is rebuffs. Although the Arabs have many friends in the United States, Arab-American relations are set back by these constant rebuffs.” (McGhee Files: Lot 53 D 468: “Syria and Lebanon 1948—Memoranda”)

  1. For documentation on the Economic Survey Mission headed by Mr. Clapp, see Foreign Relations, 1949, vol. vi, pp. 594 ff.↩