710 Consultation (4)/11–1344
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Acting Director of the Office of American Republic Affairs (Armour)
| Participants: | Señor Don Marcial Mora, Ambassador of Chile. |
| Norman Armour, Acting Director, Office of American Republic Affairs. | |
| James Wright Chief, NWC.34 |
The Chilean Ambassador called this evening by appointment, having telephoned to say that he had an urgent matter to take up. Dr. Mora said that our Government had asked the Chilean Government’s views on the Argentine proposal and he had now received a telegram from his Government, which he proceeded to read, setting forth the Chilean Government’s position. Briefly, it was this: The Chilean Government was in favor of having the meeting, with the Argentine question first on the agenda. The telegram also listed other matters they felt should be included, having to do with the war and postwar problems, the inter-American security system, et cetera. The Ambassador went on to say that if the discussion showed that the other governments felt the Argentine Government had failed to make its case they should then be asked immediately to withdraw and the meeting would then proceed to consider the other important questions.
Dr. Padilla’s proposal then came up, and the Ambassador indicated with some insistence that his Government would like to have our opinion on this. I told him that we had only within the last twenty-four hours completed our reply to Dr. Padilla on his proposal and that a copy of this had been sent to our missions in the various American countries except Argentina, and I presumed that our Ambassador, Mr. Bowers, either had already or would shortly have communicated [Page 47] our position on this to Dr. Fernández.35 The Ambassador showed some irritation that we had taken this step without informing him, stating that had he known of this it was probable that it would have forestalled his Government in sending the telegram he had just read me on the Argentine proposal. The discussion then turned to the general question of the merits of the two proposals, and we endeavored to explain to the Ambassador the reasons why we felt that the Farrell regime by its actions did not merit having favorable consideration given to their proposal to call a meeting for the primary purpose of considering Argentina’s case and that the furthest we feel we could go would be to have a representative of the Argentine Government appear at the end of a meeting called to discuss the more important American problems, when they could be heard—this, provided the other American countries felt we should go as far as this. It was explained to Dr. Mora that Dr. Padilla’s proposal was still under discussion and that no final decision would be reached until we had the views of the other governments. Mr. Spaeth35a explained briefly certain of the points raised in the Padilla proposal, a copy of which the Ambassador had with him. It was clear that the Ambassador’s interpretation of Padilla’s proposal differed materially from our own. As the conversation had by this time been going on for almost two hours, it was agreed that we would meet again in the morning and at that time give the Ambassador a résumé of our position on the Padilla proposal.
The Ambassador said he wished to make it clear that his Government desired to cooperate with us in every way and that if we were not disposed to accept the Argentine proposal they would accept our position. He had asked for this preliminary talk with us before seeing the Acting Secretary, and now that he had our views he did not propose to press the matter further with the Acting Secretary.