684A.85322/10–1553: Telegram
No. 690
The Ambassador in France (Dillon) to the Department of State1
priority
1491. London for Johnston. I accompanied Ambassador Johnston on a visit to Bidault this afternoon. Johnston outlined the objective of his mission regarding TVA plan, and Bidault said that he was in full accord with our objectives, but that he was glad to see that Johnston was under no illusions as to the difficulties ahead of him in achieving an agreement with all concerned. Bidault also remarked that France continued to have special interests and a traditional connection with Lebanon and Syria, which had in no way been affected by any of the recent speeches by representatives of those two countries in UN.
Johnston also outlined our ideas regarding a settlement for Jerusalem, and said that he felt there was a strong possibility that it might be necessary to settle Jerusalem along general line of 1950 Swedish proposal2 in order to obtain Israel’s agreement to TVA plan. Johnston also told Bidault that we had approached the Vatican on this subject and had just heard that they had rejected our proposition and remained in favor of complete territorial internationalization of Jerusalem. Johnston then said that he hoped that Bidault would use his influence with Vatican to get them to accept something along the lines of Swedish plan which he thought was only solution that would be accepted by both Jordan and Israel.
Bidault had not been briefed on subject of Jerusalem, but he expressed full understanding of our objective and said that he would look into matter further himself, and meanwhile he would explore subject with Vatican, indicating France’s interest in arriving at an agreed settlement of this difficult problem.
- Repeated priority to London, Rome, Tel Aviv, Beirut, Damascus, Jidda, Baghdad, Amman, Cairo, and New York.↩
- See footnote 1, Document 662.↩