66. Letter From Foreign Secretary Lloyd to Acting Secretary of State Herter1
Foster wrote to me on February 22 about Hungary and I have given careful consideration to his proposals in consultation with our posts concerned.
I agree that the Hungarian issue should not be allowed to wither away, and the General Assembly’s purpose in appointing so prominent a figure as Sir L. Munro was to ensure that the question of Hungary should be kept in the public eye and that the Assembly itself should be kept informed of any developments with regard to its resolutions on Hungary. But his mandate from the Assembly is to act as rapporteur, no more. The Resolution appointing him3 did not request the Hungarian or the Soviet Governments to cooperate with him, nor did it ask him to take any action with the Soviet or Hungarian authorities to secure implementation of the Assembly’s resolutions. It would be consistent with the terms of the Resolution that he should approach the Hungarian and Soviet Governments and ask for their cooperation in the discharge of his mandate; and I should see no objection to his making such an approach, though I am sure that he would encounter a rebuff. To have such a rebuff on record may be a desirable preliminary if he is to submit to the Assembly a report based on other than official Soviet and Hungarian sources. But I should not favour Foster’s step (1) partly because it is not in accordance with the terms of Sir L. Munro’s mandate that he should try behind the scenes to persuade the Soviet [Page 104] and Hungarian Governments that it would be in their own interest to cooperate with the United Nations; and partly because such a move would probably be countered with a charge of provocation for which public opinion would not have been prepared. As for stage (3), Sir P. Dixon considers, and I agree, that under the Charter it would be difficult to justify the summoning of the Security Council for this purpose. A difficulty I foresee as regards step (4) is that under Article 6 of the Charter,4 expulsion is only foreseen in respect of persistent violation of the principles of the Charter, and in this respect the Russians are as deserving of expulsion as the Hungarians. These considerations regarding step (4) seem, however, to be hardly relevant to the role of Sir L. Munro as rapporteur.
The situation would, however, be altered if the Hungarian Government committed some conspicuous act of repression or of defiance of the United Nations which would present an obvious occasion for Security Council action. It is just conceivable, for example, that Hungarian action against Cardinal Mindszenty and the United States Legation at Budapest might provide such an occasion without effort on our part. Even so I should wish to consider the circumstances at the time before giving an opinion on the expediency of resorting to such a measure. I should not wish to see such a situation artificially engineered by us; but if it were provoked by the Hungarians and we were agreed that step (4) had become appropriate, step (5) would seem to follow.
If we were to get to stage (5)—without any development of the sort envisaged in the last paragraph—I assume that the technical basis for the rejection of Hungarian credentials would be that the Kadar Government was illegally constituted; and I think it is late to argue this.
In general, I doubt whether the General Assembly would favour the rejection of Hungarian credentials unless the Hungarian Government were to do something quite horrible while the Assembly was actually in session. I certainly do not think that the frustration of the mandate given to Sir L. Munro would be sufficient to achieve this.
As you are aware, I should regard it as a serious setback if we were to go for the rejection of Hungarian credentials and fail.
I have commented individually on the steps listed in Foster’s message. I do not agree with all of them; yet in the proposed plan of action they are closely linked. I regret that such a closely linked plan does not commend itself to us, particularly in that we regard the frustrations of Sir L. Munro’s mandate as an inadequate starting point [Page 105] for such an operation. Moreover, as I said to Foster on February 4,5 I think that there is a real risk that a move against Hungary in the United Nations might create a precedent which would be used to the disadvantage of the Western Powers, e.g., over South Africa.
So far as Anglo-Hungarian relations are concerned, I have no evidence that the Soviet or Hungarian Governments are trying to exploit our failure to take stronger action in the United Nations as an indication of weakness.
More generally, I would suggest that we must be careful not to drive the more thinking elements of Hungarian society and administration to despair. While we have no exaggerated hopes of the Hungarian Government we are counting on helping to keep hope alive by contacts with actual or potential elements of discontent among the Hungarian leaders. If we adopt too harsh a policy toward the Hungarian Government, we shall be hindering this main object.
- Source: Department of State, Presidential Correspondence: Lot 66 D 204. Secret. No salutation appears on the source text. Attached to the source text is a February 23 note from Hood forwarding the letter to Herter.↩
- Document 61.↩
- Regarding U.N. General Assembly Resolution 1312 (XIII), December 12, 1958, see Document 57.↩
- See footnote 5, Document 16.↩
- A memorandum of this conversation reads: “Mr. Lloyd acknowledged that he had received the Secretary’s letter about handling Hungary in the United Nations, and said that he would like to have time to study it before commenting in detail.” (Washington National Records Center, RG 59, Conference Files: FRC 83–0068, CF 1196) Dulles was in Europe, February 3–9, to consult with French, British, and German Government leaders and with the NATO Secretary-General, Paul-Henri Spaak.↩
- Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩