3. Memorandum From the Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs (Key) to the Deputy Under Secretary of State (Murphy)1
SUBJECT
- Meeting in your office with Mr. Mason Sears, U.S. Representative on the Trusteeship Council and on the Committee on Information from Non-Self-Governing Territories, April 29, at three-thirty
As you know, the United States positions on many colonial and trusteeship questions are the result of compromises reached by Interior, Defense and State, and therefore reflect what is practical, what is safe, and what is right and diplomatically expedient. The goals are generally agreed on, both internally and among our Allies, but the timing and methods of attaining them entail many differences of view.
The Department’s line was defined by the Secretary in November 1953, when he warned against both too much delay and too premature action. His summary statement was as follows:
“There is no slightest wavering in our conviction that the orderly transition from colonial to self-governing status should be carried resolutely to a completion.”
Mr. Sears has not always been too happy with Departmental guidance and tends to believe that we are frequently too solicitous of British, French and Belgian views. As a member of a recent United Nations Visiting Mission to East Africa he associated himself [in an individual capacity]2 with a number of recommendations which the British and Belgian Governments flatly rejected and on which they made strong representations to the Department, particularly on the time-table concept for attaining self-government which he had endorsed. He was instructed to state in the Trusteeship Council that his Government did not believe it was realistic or practical to apply it now to Tanganyika or Ruandi-Urundi.3
The approach of the Department and that of Mr. Sears can perhaps be summarized in a nutshell as follows: Sears believes that [Page 7] we should “make friends with the Africans, even if we alienate or irritate our European Allies.” The Department agrees that we should make friends with the Africans, but without alienating our Allies. The second proposition is, of course, difficult and requires the greatest tact and diplomacy.
The purpose of the meeting in your office would be to get acquainted with Mr. Sears, hear his general views, and to explain how the Department’s views are reached and how they often appear to be unsatisfactory to some of us.
It is proposed that the Assistant Secretaries or their Deputies from the geographic Bureaus principally concerned should be there to participate in the discussion. Later in the day I suggest that Mr. Gerig take Mr. Sears around to see Mr. Orme Lewis, at Interior, and the officials in Defense who are concerned with these questions as they affect our territories.4
I think you should allow a half- to three-quarters hour for this meeting in your office if possible.5
- Source: Department of State, IO/ODA Files: Lot 62 D 225, U.S. Representative in Trusteeship Council. Official Use Only. Drafted by Gerig.↩
- Brackets in the source text.↩
- On February 25, Sears informed the Trusteeship Council that his views differed somewhat from those of the U.S. Government. He indicated that the United States was opposed to the timetable principle in the case of Tanganyika. See Official Records of the Fifteenth Session of the Trusteeship Council, 585th Meeting, February 25, 1955, p. 175 and Press Release No. 2121 of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, February 24, 1955. (Department of State, IO Files)↩
- No record of a meeting between Sears and Murphy has been found in Department of State files. However, there is a record of the conversations of Sears on that date with Captain Monroe B. Duffill, Director, Administration and Plans Division, Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, and with Assistant Secretary of the Interior Orme Lewis. Whereas the first discussion was general in nature, in the second Sears and Lewis entered into more substantive talks. Sears indicated that he considered it ridiculous to assume that if he advocated timetables, others on the Trusteeship Council would apply the principle to the Pacific Islands. (Memorandum of conversation by Robbins, April 29; Ibid., IO/ODA Files, Lot 62 D 225, U.S. Representative in Trusteeship Council)↩
- Murphy initialed his approval.↩