Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, Suez Crisis, July 26–December 31, 1956, Volume XVI

481. Memorandum for the Record by the Representative at the United Nations (Lodge), November 3, 1956¹

November 3, 1956

I telephoned the President at 7:00 p.m. He said that the two resolutions which we were sponsoring seemed to him the next step and provided a very definite method by which problems might be settled. They sought to attack the basic causes. He said it would be “a great tragedy” if the British and French got ashore.

The President is very anxious that someone get something to stall this landing operation off. The Canadians have a draft resolution which sets up a committee of 5.

The President, in order to stall this off and allow the negotiations to go on, wants to get the Secretary-General into the act, who could act more freely than a committee of 5 would.

Conditions:

That the Egyptians would be agreeable;

That Lloyd and Eden will accept the proposal; and I am to see the Secretary-General, sell it to him, and then sell it to Pearson when he arrives.²

1. Source: Department of State, USUN Files. Top Secret. Drafted by Lodge. The source text indicates that Lodge telephoned the contents of this memorandum to Hoover and Phleger at the Department of State.
2. Lester Pearson recalled in his memoirs that in response to comments which Secretary Dulles had made to Ambassador Heeney on November 2 (see Document 411) the Canadian Government decided to propose that the U.N. General Assembly create a Committee of Five to consider and report within 48 hours on the immediate establishment of an international “intervention force”. The following day in New York, however, Lodge presented Pearson with a draft resolution prepared by the State Department, which Lodge felt would be acceptable to the Egyptians and consequently to the Afro-Asian group. Noting that the U.S. draft was simpler than the Canadian one, Pearson decided to adopt it with a few revisions and later that day presented the revised version to the General Assembly as a Canadian draft resolution. (Mike, The Memoirs of the Right Honourable Lester B. Pearson, Vol. II (New York: Quadrangle, 1973), pp. 249–251) No copy of the draft resolution which Lodge showed to Pearson has been found in Department of State files. The text of the Canadian draft resolution which provided for the involvement of the U.N. Secretary-General, is printed in Document 485.