560.AL/2–2048: Telegram
The Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Douglas) to the Secretary of State
662. For Lovett from Douglas. At a meeting with Bevin, Cripps and Harold Wilson, president of the Board of Trade, this afternoon, Cripps and Wilson expressed concern over the developments at the ITO conference in Havana.
Preliminary examination of the communication which they had received this morning from HMG’s delegation indicated that while on the one hand further concessions were contemplated for the South American countries, India, Australia and New Zealand in the establishment of quotas and restrictions to trade in order to foster economic development, on the other hand, HMG was being asked to relinquish some of the concessions of a discriminatory character to which we had tentatively agreed at Geneva.1
Would appreciate your appraisal of what has occurred.
Cripps and Wilson will give me on Monday their complete analysis of what has so far transpired at Geneva [Habana?]
- This refers to the discussion regarding Article 23 (see footnote 1, p. 841), which entered a new and decisive phase on February 12 when the United States “presented without commitment a text showing how the Anglo-American Proposals of 1945 could be translated into a completely new text for Article 23.” (Delegation’s Summary Report No. 52, February 12 meetings, Lot 57D284, Box 105) An informal United States-British negotiation on this question is described in Habana telegram 249, February 27, 2 p.m., p. 875.↩