Office of the Historian

772.00/9–1652

Memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs (Perkins) and the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern, South Asian, and African Affairs (Byroade) to the Under Secretary of State (Bruce)1

secret
[Washington,] September 16, 1952.

Subject:

  • Inclusion of Tunisian Item on 7th UNGA Agenda

With Reference to the memorandum of September 11 from UNA2 regarding the position which the United States should adopt on inscription of the Tunisian Item on the Agenda of the 7th United Nations General Assembly, we feel that the adoption of a position supporting inscription should be accompanied by a public declaration along the lines of the attached draft.3 It will be noted that this statement contains the following points:

1.
The United States will vote for inscription.
2.
We remain convinced that this is essentially a bilateral problem between France and Tunisia capable only of a bilateral solution.
3.
We will do everything possible to help such a bilateral solution and we think the General Assembly should also have the resumption of direct negotiations between France and Tunisia as its goal.
4.
We sympathize basically with the desire of the Tunisians for a greater measure of self-government, and accordingly have followed with interest the development by France of a reform program for Tunisia.
5.
Our attitude on inscription is not a vote of censure of French policy in Tunisia.

[Page 811]

We believe that a statement along the above lines should supplement our decision to vote for inscription because we will thus reiterate our basic policy regarding the bilateral nature of this question and, at the same time, give a measure of satisfaction to the French by explaining our reasons for deciding to vote for inscription. There is some indication that the French are not pressing as hard for a statement following the Bey’s rejection of the French program as they were before, but we believe they would certainly greatly prefer such a declaration to be issued in conjunction with the announcement of our decision to the simple statement we were voting for inscription, on which question the French position is still undetermined.

Therefore we recommend that the United States vote to inscribe the Tunisian Item on the General Assembly Agenda, after first informing the French Government, and that this decision subsequently be announced by a declaration along the lines of the attached draft.

  1. This memorandum was drafted by Utter (AF) and McBride (WE) and was transmitted to the Under Secretary through Matthews (G).↩
  2. Supra.↩

  3. Not printed. A memorandum by Assistant Secretary Hickerson to Bruce, dated Sept. 17, informed the Under Secretary that UNA considered the EUR–NEA draft statement undesirable. The French were not pressing for such a statement, and to issue EUR–NEA’s statement would be repeating the past error of tying procedural and substantive issues together. If the Department of State considered it necessary to issue a statement, UNA attached a draft to be considered. UNA’s draft merely stated that the United States Delegation would vote in favor of placing the Tunisian question on the agenda. Since the Bey had rejected the French proposals, discussion in the General Assembly seemed appropriate, and the United States hoped it would contribute to a constructive solution of the problem by agreement between the French and the Tunisians. The final paragraph of the UNA draft stated that the action was a reaffirmation of traditional U.S. policy that all members were entitled to a hearing in the United Nations. (772.00/9–1752)

    A memorandum for the files by Hickerson, dated Sept. 29, stated that he had not signed the memorandum of Sept. 17, but had authorized UNP to send a copy of it to Ambassador Jessup. He concluded: “I did not sign this memorandum for the reason that I felt we had passed the time for writing such papers and faced the urgent necessity of reconciling top views in the Department by getting together in a meeting. At my request Ambassador Jessup arranged such a meeting, which led to the decision regarding Tunisia set forth in the Department’s telegram No. 1780 of September 26, 1952 to Paris.” (772.00/9–1752) No memorandum of conversation of the meeting arranged by Ambassador Jessup has been found in Department of State files.

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