No. 210
Editorial Note
The Conference of the United States Chiefs of Mission in the Near East Area (RECNE) was held at Istanbul, Turkey, from May 11 through May 14, 1954. Present at the Conference were Henry Byroade, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern, South Asian, and African Affairs; Burton Y. Berry, Ambassador to Iraq; Cavendish W. Cannon, Ambassador to Greece; Raymond A. Hare, [Page 505] Ambassador to Lebanon; Loy W. Henderson, Ambassador to Iran; Horace A. Hildreth, Ambassador to Pakistan; Lester D. Mallory, Ambassador to Jordan; James S. Moose, Ambassador to Syria; Henry S. Villard, Minister to Libya; George Wadsworth, Ambassador to Saudi Arabia; Angus Ward, Ambassador to Afghanistan; Avra M. Warren, Ambassador to Turkey; Francis H. Russell, Chargé d’Affaires at Tel Aviv; G. Lewis Jones, Counselor of Embassy at Cairo; Evan Wilson, First Secretary of Embassy at London; William Burdett, Office of Near Eastern Affairs, Department of State; and Donald C. Bergus, Acting Executive Secretary of the Conference.
On the opening day of the Conference, each participant gave a brief review of the current situation in the country to which he was accredited. Those reviews are in the “Summary Record of the Conference of U.S. Chiefs of Mission in the NEA Area Held at Istanbul, May 11–14, 1954,” which also includes a brief statement by each of the participants on the general reputation of the United States in the country to which he was assigned. The Summary Record, not printed, is in Department of State file 120.4382.
Following the country reviews, the members of the Conference had a lengthy discussion of the problem of regional security in the Near East. The agreed conclusions of the Conference on that topic, drafted by Henderson with the assistance of Berry and Jones, are Annex A to the Summary Record of the Conference, and are printed infra. After another lengthy discussion of the problem of the Arab-Israeli tensions in the area, the agreed conclusions of the Conference on that topic were drafted by Hare, assisted by Russell. That paper is Annex B to the Summary Record of the Conference, Document 824.