440. Telegram From the Commander in Chief, Pacific (Stump), to the Chief of Naval Operations (Burke)1
222126Z. Subj: Resumption Phil-US base negotiations. Ref joint State–Defense message (SecState to Manila 15112 passed by crypto WAR SVC 9572 as 081010Z).
The following CINCPAC comments are submitted for consideration.
The break-off in negotiations which occurred last December appears to have caused no serious strain in Phil-US relations. Those Phil officials who have since looked back objectively at the 1956 negotiations cannot fail to find ample evidence of overreaching tactics on the part of their own panelists. Under the proposed plan for resumption of talks at the diplomatic level the built-in disadvantages of panel vs panel will be avoided. CINCPAC shares in the hope that a more orderly and closed session type of negotiation will prevail. None the less should a renewal of negotiations, even though at diplomatic levels, fail once again to achieve mutual satisfaction, the US may not find it as easy to slip back into an existing and satisfactory status quo. In the next go-round the stakes are higher. The US cannot afford to call another recess. Consequently we cannot afford to commence negotiations without a thorough and realistic preparation.
It is generally expected that criminal jurisdiction (which was the stumbling block last year by design or otherwise) will again be an issue of troublesome proportions. CINCPAC submits that it is an unqualified [Page 734] essential for the US to have a pre-determined position on criminal jurisdiction before the commencement (or re-opening) of negotiations. It cannot be recommended too vigorously that the US negotiators be furnished with a definitive position paper on Phil-US jurisdiction before the commencement of talks. This position paper may well direct US efforts towards a certain desired solution—the paper may also permit several fall-back positions—but it must not fail to reflect a final position which represents the irreducible minimum acceptable to the US. This State–Defense guidance on jurisdiction must be clear and unambiguous. We will then have a fair chance of avoiding a repetition of continuous message exchange carried out in an undesirable atmosphere of urgency. Only in this way too can the US negotiators really know for certain their own position and, more important, be enabled to impart a sense of decisiveness and finality to their opposite numbers. (In retrospect it would seem that a sense of finality was never gotten across to the Phil panelists of 1956 on many of our positions. Somehow the Phils acted as though US positions possessed indefinite elasticity. Perhaps this can be traced in part to our failure to provide firm terms of reference.)
In submitting the above comments, CINCPAC is not disagreeing with the proposed plan to have certain “experts and technicians” assigned to the Embassy staff in Manila. But CINCPAC submits that in the field of jurisdiction at least, the experts can be best utilized in pre-negotiation activity to delineate an acceptable strategy defined. These experts can be employed to monitor tactical moves along a predetermined path.
- Source: Department of Defense, OASD/ISA Files, FMRA Records, Philippines. Secret. Repeated to the Embassy in Manila, CINCPACREP Philippines,CINCPACFLT, CINUSARPAC, and CINCPACAF.↩
- Document 438.↩