790.5/10–754
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Acting Deputy Director of the Office of British Commonwealth and Northern European Affairs (Horsey)
Subject:
- Manila Conference
Participants:
- Mr. F. J. Blakeney, Counsel, Australian Embassy
- Mr. Horsey, Acting Deputy Director, BNA
I had the following discussion, on a personal basis, with Mr. Blakeney, when he called today on a related subject.
I told Mr. Blakeney of the letter given to our Chargé at Canberra (Canberra’s 123 of October 7)1 and said I thought it was a little rough on us, since the timetable at the conference had been agreed to by all the delegations, and the policy questions had been exhaustively discussed for at least three or four weeks prior to the actual conference. We recognized, of course, that the Australian Government had had a real problem because of the nature of the “understanding” which the United States had attached. On the other hand, that device had been worked out by us on the assumption that Australia, like all the others except ourselves, opposed the limitation to “Communist” aggression and that the last minute change in that assumption had of course affected the remedy which we had devised, so that the change in Australia’s position at that late date would have placed the entire enterprise in the most serious jeopardy. Mr. Blakeney understood this but felt that it would have been avoided if we could have presented to them a little earlier our proposed solution on the definition of aggression. I explained that it had only been developed at the very end of the conference and we had consulted on it just as soon as we could. Mr. Blakeney explained that, as he understood it, the “major issue” mentioned in the letter quoted in Canberra’s 123 of October 7, was the question of essentially different commitments being undertaken by Australia and the United States. It was this question which the Australian Cabinet felt they had not had sufficient time to consider. I said [Page 936] this was a good point but the letter did not seem to recognize that there had in fact been no alternative if the conference was not to fail.