Foreign Relations of the United States, 1951, Korea and China, Volume VII, Part 1

795B.00/1–1651

Memorandum of Conversation, by Ward P. Allen of the Bureau of European Affairs

confidential

[Washington,] January 16, 1951.

Subject: UK Views on Machinery for Further UN Action in Korea

Participants:	Mr. Gerald Meade, British Embassy
	Mr. David Popper, UNP
	Mr. Ward P. Allen, EUR

Mr. Meade reported that the UK Foreign Office does not believe it would be wise to use the Collective Measures Committee for the consideration of any measures to be taken by the UN against the Chinese Communists following failure of the current cease-fire effort for the following reasons:

1) The CMC was set up for the specific purpose of general planning under the Uniting for Peace Resolution and to seize upon it now for a different purpose would distort and extend its terms of reference.

2) So to use the CMC would make it much more difficult for the Committee later to carry out with effective support the functions for which it was set up; it would be discredited and attacked by the Soviets and others as biased.

3) The CMC has a number of “irresponsible” members and it would be difficult to guide.

4) Consideration of what if any further action should be taken against the Chinese Communists if the cease-fire effort fails should take the form of private consultations between the UK and with other Commonwealth and friendly Governments and no resolution should be submitted to Committee I without such consideration.

5) Once these steps are worked out the question of what body needs to be created to consider or coordinate them should then be considered and it might well be that the CMC would prove to be the best body although the UK inclines to some ad hoc group.

6) In any event, careful consideration must be given to the agenda of the CMC under the Uniting for Peace program when it does meet; there should be no early meeting and none until the US and UK agree on what it should do.

In setting forth these views the Foreign Office desired to make clear that this was without prejudice to their views on the nature of the action to be taken.

We indicated the general thinking of the Department to be as follows: We feel that if the cease-fire effort fails no alternative remains but for the UN to take a strong position against Chinese Communist intervention. In addition to condemning the action for what it is, the GA will be faced with the alternative either of recommending specific consequential steps or of providing some mechanism for the consideration of possible future action. We are by no means completely wedded to the use of this Committee but have been unable to think of a more practically useful body for this purpose.

With regard to the specific points raised by the Foreign Office,

1) We agree that this task would be an extension of the terms of reference of the CMC but there is nothing to prevent the GA by such a resolution from conferring on its subsidiary body this specific ad hoc temporary task.

2) We do not feel on balance that the fact that the CMC should discharge such a task would seriously jeopardize its ability to carry out the more general type of planning envisaged in the Uniting for Peace Resolution, except perhaps to “discredit” it in the eyes of such countries as the USSR who opposed its creation anyway. There is, moreover, some connection between this specific type of planning and the general measures which the Committee is charged with studying.

3) We feel the CMC is on the whole well balanced and responsible. With one or two exceptions it should be responsive to proper leadership.^* We feel that to seek to set up a new ad hoc group would run the risk of obtaining a body with much less desirable composition. However, our thinking on this matter is flexible and we would appreciate any alternative suggestions which the UK might have.

4) We expressed complete agreement with the necessity of prior consultation with the UK and Commonwealth and other friendly Governments on the specific steps to be taken whatever the formal mechanism used.

5) It seems undesirable, however, from the point of view of public reaction and reaction in Peiping and Moscow to wait until those specific measures are agreed upon in detail in order to consider the UN body that should study them. We look upon the CMC more as a forum to give consideration to the nature of the measures than as one to coordinate their implementation.

6) We agree that careful consideration, US–UK consultation and planning should precede any CMC meeting to begin its original assigned task under the Uniting for Peace Resolution, although there may be some advantage in an early formal organizational meeting.

Mr. Meade indicated that he would transmit these observations to his Foreign Office.

Comments

The emphasis placed by the UK on prior consultation before introducing proposals for specific steps underscores the importance of accelerating more specific thinking on the exact proposals to be placed before the CMC and on discussing these with the UK as a prerequisite to their full cooperation in this next step. At the same time underlying the views of the Foreign Office as reported was an assumption that some such resolution as the US has in mind would be passed and it may be that this shift of emphasis from objections to the taking of such a step to detailed criticisms of the machinery to be used indicates a greater resignation by the UK to the necessity that some such step be taken.

W[ard] P. A[llen]

1. The Committee consists of Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Burma, Canada, Egypt, France, Mexico, Philippines, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Venezuela and Yugoslavia. [Footnote in the source text.]