Office of the Historian

Conference files, lot 60 D 627, CF 358

Memorandum of Conversation, by the Acting Deputy Director of the Office of British Commonwealth and Northern European Affairs (Horsey)

secret
[Washington,] October 7, 1954.

Subject:

  • Australian Ratification of Manila Pact

Participants:

  • Mr. F. J. Blakeney, Counselor, Australian Embassy
  • Mr. Horsey, Acting Deputy Director, BNA

Mr. Blakeney said that he had been instructed to tell us in confidence the decision of the Australian Cabinet on the ratification of the Manila Pact. The Cabinet’s decision is set out in the attached paper which he left with me. I thanked him for this information and said I would get it at once to the interested officers of the Department.

Mr. Blakeney stressed the great importance of maintaining the secrecy of this information.

[Attachment]

Paper Received From the Australian Embassy

secret

Cabinet has agreed that—

(1)
Australia should ratify Manila Treaty without any formal reservation.
(2)
An Act of Parliament should be passed during present session approving ratification of treaty.
(3)
The Act should contain a preamble which would recite circumstances leading to the Manila Treaty such as the common danger of Communism in the region and Communist actions in Korea, Indochina and Malaya.
(4)
At the time that Parliament is asked to approve that Act, the Government would make a careful statement in the House of our intentions under the Treaty indicating that we consider that the common danger was communism and that consequently the only action which might involve military force which we contemplated, or would be ready to take under Article IV (1) of the Treaty, would be against Communist aggression.
(5)
The Act should contain a clause stating that it would come into effect on a date to be proclaimed. This would allow proclamation of Act to be deferred until the United States had ratified the [Page 935] Treaty. Australia would then deposit its ratification at about the same time as America.
(6)
The United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand should be informed in advance of the foregoing course.

7 October 1954.