862S.00/9–546
Extract From Telegram From the Foreign Office to Lord Inverchapel Dated August 31st, 194695
His Majesty’s Government have never considered that agreement to terms of trusteeship by the “States directly concerned” should take the shape of a formal treaty. Therefore we do not contemplate that the draft terms of trusteeship as agreed upon under Article 79 will carry any signatures. It will be seen from the draft terms for our African territories (published as Command Papers 6840 and 6863) that these terms have been drawn up in the form of an Assembly resolution the preamble to which contains the words “having satisfied itself that the agreement of the States directly concerned including the mandatory power has been obtained in accordance with Article 79 of the said Charter”. In submitting the draft terms of trusteeship to the Secretary-General we intend to inform him that the agreement of Belgium and South Africa, in the case of Tanganyika and France and South Africa in the case of the West African mandated territories has been obtained and to enclose copies of the relevant notes from them provided these governments have no objection. As regards Soviet thesis attributed to Gromyko by Dulles and Gerig, we cannot trace any record that Soviet Delegation expressed view that trusteeship agreements required signature by “States directly concerned”, nor do we recollect this point being made. His Majesty’s Government’s attitude as explained above is different. Charter is admittedly obscure but nowhere states explicitly that process described in Article 79 (regarding terms of trusteeship being agreed upon by “States directly concerned”) itself constitutes (or is identical with) the “trusteeship agreement” mentioned in e.g. Articles 75, 77, 80 and 81. It will be noted that term “trusteeship agreement” is not used in Article 79 and in our opinion this variation of wording was deliberate and is significant. The trusteeship agreement in our view is the instrument which governs relationship between administering authority and United Nations (to whom administering authority is accountable). The trusteeship agreement is the document which designates the administering authority (Article 81) and by which the territory is placed under the trusteeship system established by the United Nations (Articles 75 and 80). It must be something different from the proposal referred to in Article 79 because the States directly concerned do not themselves place the territory under trusteeship. Their function under [Page 619] Article 79 is simply to agree upon the terms of trusteeship which they must do before the United Nations can take action on any draft terms. In other words although the word “agreement” in the term “trusteeship agreement” clearly means an instrument of some kind the phrase “agreed upon” in Article 79 has no such formal significance but means simply “concurred in”. Such concurrence (or agreement without a capital A) can as stated above be obtained by diplomatic consultation and no question of signature arises. Our interpretation is implicit in the form of draft terms of trusteeship communicated to Soviet Government among others in January. Soviet Government have so far made no comment either on form or on content of these drafts and despite attitude adopted by Yugoslav and Soviet Delegations during preparatory commission on interpretation of “States directly concerned” have not approached us since receipt of these drafts with request to be recognised as “State directly concerned”. That being so we believe it would be tactical mistake to approach Soviet Government at this late stage on the procedural question without any obvious reason for doing so. In our view such an approach would be likely to create impression that we felt doubtful about our interpretation. It would weaken our position by provoking suspicion and at same time giving Soviet Union plenty of time to think up objections. We believe it is much wiser to proceed according to plan as though no uncertainty existed. If Soviet Delegations at New York argue in favour of “agreements” signed by States directly concerned we should rely on arguments outlined above to counter such interpretation and trust United States Government (whose objective on this point seems identical with ours) would support us.
We naturally desire to avoid a clash with the Russians when the draft terms of trusteeship come up for discussion. While there may be arguments which Russians could use against procedure we propose we should have thought that following action would be open to us. We were urged by the Assembly resolution of February 9th to take all “practical steps” for the implementation of Article 79 of the Charter. As no authoritative interpretation has been given to this Article, His Majesty’s Government have been obliged to work on basis of their own interpretation which was explained to the Assembly at the time. In presenting the draft terms to the Assembly in the form of a draft Assembly resolution His Majesty’s Government do not intend to preclude the discussion at the Assembly of the interpretation of Article 79 or of any comments on the draft terms made by other States either during debates at the Assembly or through diplomatic channels. But His Majesty’s Government will insist on adherence to the wording of Articles 79 and 85 which limit the functions of the Assembly to approval or disapproval of the draft terms. Thus if a Delegation [Page 620] wishes to secure a change in the draft terms of trusteeship submitted by the mandatory power it could only move that the Assembly should not approve them unless amended in some particular respect. Even if such a motion were carried by necessary majority this would not of itself be effective in amending draft terms since under Article 79 “States directly concerned” (including mandatory power) must agree upon any alteration or amendment of terms of trusteeship before such amendment can be approved by United Nations. Russia would have NO veto on the terms of trusteeship unless she establishes a claim to be a State directly concerned. There is nothing in the Charter to indicate how it should be decided who are the “States directly concerned”, but as it is essentially a political issue presumably it will be decided in the last resort by the Assembly. Russia would therefore require a two-thirds majority (see Article 18) to carry a motion that she should be recognised as a State directly concerned.
- Transmitted to the Director of the Office of Special Political Affairs (Hiss) by the First Secretary of the British Embassy (Middleton) under a covering letter of September 5 as an explanation of “the preliminary views of His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom as to the manner in which the problem of submitting trusteeship agreements might be met.”↩