USUN Files
Memorandum by the British Delegation to the United Nations Commission for Conventional Armaments to the United States Delegation
confidential
New York, July 28,
1947.
The United Kingdom Government are anxious that their Representative on the Commission for Conventional Armaments should take the initiative as soon as the appropriate moment offers to put forward a simple scheme for the exchange of information on armed forces and for the verification of this information.
- 2.
- A proposal in this sense was communicated to the United Kingdom Delegation in New York even before the Commission was fully established, but, as the United States Representative will be aware, [Page 576] the preoccupation of the Commission with procedural questions has hitherto left no opportunity for such proposals to be put forward.
- 3.
- The proposal of the United Kingdom Government may be summarised as follows. The difficulties which must confront us when we attempt to draft a comprehensive convention must be faced. We must not delude ourselves or the public with the idea that it is a work that can be easily or rapidly accomplished, and much time must elapse before any such convention can be brought into force. It is for consideration, therefore, whether it would not be better to proceed by stages, and the United Kingdom Government have considered, for instance, whether it would not be practical to arrange now for an early exchange of information on armed forces and armaments, coupled with a simple system of verification such as is only possible at this preliminary stage. Whatever preliminary system of verification could be agreed on would, of course, have to be one that gave reasonable assurances as to the reliability of the information supplied.
- 4.
- As the confirmation of numbers of certain types of armaments might be extremely difficult, and might lead to delays in the setting up of the first simple foundations for a system of exchange of information and its verification, it is proposed that initially the scheme should be limited to the exchange of information on the strength of armed forces. It is considered that it should be relatively easy to confirm the truth of statements on the strength of armed forces, and a system of verification designed to cover armed forces alone might gradually be developed into the basis of any future convention on general armaments regulation. The usefulness of such a scheme for the exchange of information on armed forces depends on its being recognised as a first step. It is felt that the readiness of the nations to cooperate would be an earnest of their readiness to proceed into more complicated fields of armaments regulation and reduction; it also felt that readiness to cooperate in the first and admittedly simple step would be a valuable contribution towards the re-establishment of international confidence, upon which any system of armaments reduction must depend.
- 4.
- The United Kingdom Government are still anxious that their representatives in New York should take the initiative in putting forward such a scheme. They have been apprised in the meantime of the rather more extensive scheme (which would embrace armaments) which Mr. Bard has been considering,1 and an outline of these proposals is being examined in London.
- 5.
- The initial reaction to Mr. Bard’s proposals was that the difficulties inherent in extending the scheme to embrace categories of armaments were being anticipated unduly, and that it would be preferable, if the question of the exchange of information is to be discussed [Page 577] at all in the Commission or its committees, that such a simple scheme as the United Kingdom Government favour should be tabled as the first step, and that an attempt should be made to limit the scheme for the exchange of information and its verification to armed forces.