Office of the Historian

230. Letter From the British Chargé (Scott) to the Director of the Executive Secretariat of the Department of State (Barnes)1

Washington,August 27, 1955.

Dear Mr.Barnes: At the request of Mr.Dulles, the United Kingdom Delegation in New York telegraphed yesterday evening to the Foreign Office about the omission from the Foreign Office statement on Palestine2 of the phrase:

“and believe that the principles outlined are those which must govern any attempt to solve the Palestine question by agreement.”3

2.

Our Secretary of State has telegraphed a reply in the following terms:

“Please inform Mr.Dulles that we decided to omit the phrase to which he refers because, in view of the final form which Mr.Dulles’ statement took, these words did not seem altogether appropriate. The ideas set forth in it were of so general a character, and the whole exercise had taken so much less detailed a form, that it seemed to us better to make certain amendments to the text which was shown to Mr.Dulles in Paris. This was one of them. You will probably observe that there were one or two other changes which followed from the same thought.

“I regret that it is too late for us now to alter the statement which has gone out to all our posts abroad, but we shall cover the point in our guidance to the press.

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“Please also thank Mr.Dulles for his kind message to me of August 25 which I received through Her Majesty’s Ambassador in Washington.4 We have done our best to conform to the various changes which the plan has necessarily had to undergo, and we shall certainly keep in every sense the spirit of our collaboration. It seems to us that it has made a very good start, and the new difficulties on the Israel-Egypt border may in fact serve to bring home to all moderate, sensible people the need for some settlement.”

3.
I understand from our Delegation that Mr.Dulles has left New York and we should therefore be most grateful if you could arrange for this message to be passed to Mr.Dulles.5

Yours sincerely,

R. H. Scott
  1. Source: Department of State,S/S–NEA Files: Lot 61 D 417, Alpha Volume 9. Top Secret; By Safe Hand.↩
  2. The text of the statement issued by the Foreign Office on August 27 is filed with a copy of a letter of August 26 from Sir Pierson Dixon to Secretary-General Hammarskjöld. (Ibid.)↩
  3. The phrase appears in the July 15 draft British statement cited in footnote 3, Document 169.↩
  4. See Document 219.↩
  5. Barnes sent this communication to Dulles on August 29. (Department of State,S/S–NEA Files: Lot 61 D 417, Alpha Volume 9)↩