122. Telegram From the Mission at the United Nations to the Department of State1
260. Re Chinese Representation. Dixon paid an official call to tell me that Her Majesty’s Govt, only “after considerable hesitation and reluctance” had agreed to the moratorium on Chinese representation. He said that this “had been a hard decision” and that he had been instructed to emphasize to me that there was “strong political feeling in both parties that the time has come to admit the Chinese Communists, and that this indefinite postponement was more and more embarrassing to HMG and increasingly more and more difficult to defend”.
He said that the British Government felt that the formula of using the words “not yet” should have been accepted by the US.
He wished to stress that the British Government had agreed to the moratorium only in a “spirit of comradeship” but that they do disagree and that the sense of comradeship does riot mean agreement. He wished to make it clear that it was “highly doubtful that the British Government could maintain this line much longer”.
I made it clear that there was a definite relationship between the American attitude and the behavior of the Chinese Communists but also made it clear that it was quite out of the question to expect any change of the American attitude in 1956.
- Source: Department of State, Central Files, 310.2/9–1055. Confidential; Priority.↩