Office of the Historian

493.90B9/3–2453: Telegram

No. 57
The Ambassador in Burma (Sebald) to the Department of State1

confidential
priority
Rangoon, March 24, 1953—7 p.m.

1840. Embdes 6052 and Deptel 1274.3 Polish vessel General Walter arrived here March 24 from Whampoa; loading 1500 tons Burmese rubber purchased by Oriental Trading Company and 300 tons used structural steel both for discharge Whampoa. Expected complete loading by March 26. Vessel proceeding Whampoa via Colombo where it will reportedly complete loading with Ceylonese rubber. Rubber loading here ostensibly belongs Henzada U Mya and Co. Steel stated to be property CPR Government as successor Nationalist Chinese Government which owned structures near Lashio later wrecked or dismantled from which this material comes.

Embassy unable say whether such steel defined as “steel scrap” for Battle Act4 purposes.

Acly called on Permanent Secretary Foreign Office today and advanced arguments given Deptel 1274 as well as exposition possible effects these shipments on TCA aid under terms Battle Act. Permanent Secretary claimed not fully informed destination rubber but possibly being transshipped Colombo. He promised look into matter and inform Embassy but gave no assurance efforts would be made interfere with rubber shipment. Re steel, he said GUB could not prevent CPR Government exporting own property and had therefore granted necessary export permit. Added that second smaller and final shipment steel contemplated.

Embassy believes these shipments have been carefully considered by GUB and decision reached at Cabinet level.5

Sebald
  1. Repeated to Colombo and London; pouched to Singapore and Djakarta.↩
  2. Not printed.↩
  3. Dated Feb. 14; it provided guidance to the Embassy concerning possible Burmese rubber exports to the People’s Republic of China. It suggested that, if conversations with the Burmese on the subject appeared desirable, the Embassy should point out that Burmese sale of rubber to Communist China, while that country was fighting the United Nations in Korea, would cause a strong public reaction in the United States, that it was important to build up the United Nations as a force in the world to protect the rights of all countries, and that it appeared that the Communist Chinese were using the issue to try to “compromise” U.S.-Burmese relations. (493.90B9/ 2–953)↩
  4. The Mutual Defense Assistance Control Act of 1951 (adopted Oct. 26, 1951; 65 Stat. 644).↩
  5. On Apr. 1, the Embassy reported it had learned that the Burmese Cabinet had decided to establish controls over the export of strategic materials, including rubber,↩