500.A14/659
The Under Secretary of State (Phillips) to the Persian Minister (Djalal)
My Dear Mr. Minister: Since our conversation on May 25, 1934, I have made a careful study of the questions which you raised in regard to the Arms Traffic Convention of 1925, and I have considered with attention the restatement of the position of your Government contained in your note of May 26. An examination of the records of the Department has failed to reveal that either the League of Nations or the General Disarmament Conference has arrived at any decision in regard to a revision of Chapter III of the Convention. The Report on Progress of Work of November 12, 1932, of the Committee for the Regulation of the Trade in and Private and State Manufacture of Arms and Implements of War of the Disarmament Conference refers to the declaration of the Persian Delegation, in regard to the Convention, and states that if this objection is to be met, it will be necessary to amend certain provisions thereof. The Report continues “The Committee, recognizing the Persian Government’s difficulty, stated that it was prepared to take the Persian proposal into consideration when the Convention comes to be examined with a view to its revision.”13 This Government is entirely in accord with the position of the Committee in regard to this matter, and, in any discussions of the revision of the Convention, our Delegation at Geneva will consider with the utmost sympathy the objections of your Government to Chapter III of the Convention.
You will have noted the final paragraph of the President’s Message to the Senate of May 18,14 in which he said: “It is my earnest hope that the representatives of the nations who will reassemble at Geneva on May 29 will be able to agree upon a Convention containing provisions for the supervision and control of the traffic in arms much more far-reaching than those which were embodied in the Convention of 1925.” You will have noted also that Mr. Norman Davis, in his speech before the General Commission of the Disarmament Conference on May 2915 stated that this Government was ready to join in measures for suppressing the evils arising from the private manufacture of and the international traffic in arms and that it “is prepared to negotiate in connection with disarmament a treaty that would deal drastically with this problem.”
[Page 458]The treaty which we have in mind would consist in part of a revision of the Arms Traffic Convention of 1925, and we hope that in carrying out that revision, a solution will be found which will be entirely acceptable to your Government.
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