276. Status Report on Antarctica1
The U.S. on May 2, 1958 proposed to 11 other countries participating in the Antarctic program of the International Geophysical Year that they join with the U.S. in a Conference on Antarctica. The countries were Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Union of South Africa, USSR, and the United Kingdom. The purpose of the Conference is to negotiate a treaty providing for freedom of scientific investigation and continuation of international scientific cooperation in Antarctica and ensuring that Antarctica be used for peaceful purposes only. The Conference was to be convened at an early date at such place as might be mutually ageeable. All 11 countries accepted the U.S. invitation to participate in the conference.
Since June 13, 1958, informal meetings have been held once or twice a week,2 for the most part in the Board Room of the National Academy of Sciences building, among representatives of the Embassies [Page 506] in Washington of the eleven countries and the U.S. to reach mutual agreement on time and place of the conference and on other procedural matters. It was the hope of most of the representatives, except the Soviet, that in these meetings preliminary agreement could be reached on some of the substantive questions pertaining to the treaty. The Soviet representative has consistently refused to discuss substantive matters except in the conference itself. He has also insisted at every occasion that all other countries which desire to do so be invited to participate in the conference. This position is opposed by all the other countries invited by the U.S.
The group has tentatively agreed upon Washington as the site of the Conference. Efforts to agree upon a date, however, have been unsuccessful mainly because of Australian insistence that more preparatory work must first be accomplished before a conference date can be set. Both the U.K. and Australia also insist that an understanding must first be reached with the USSR that participation be limited to the 12 invited by the U.S. Both fear that if the Conference convenes during the U.N. General Assembly the USSR will walk out of the Conference and immediately bring up the question of participation before that assembly. (India has already placed the subject of Antarctica on the provisional agenda of the General Assembly but later indicated it would not press for inclusion of the item in the agenda.) The Chilean and Argentine representatives have insisted that if the informal working group now meeting does not agree on an early date for the Conference (October 23 has been proposed) this failure will surely cause the General Assembly to take up the question. Chile and Argentina, which would both consider U.N. discussion of Antarctica as interference in their domestic affairs, would likely refuse to participate in any U.N. discussion of Antarctica. Efforts are now being made to overcome these procedural difficulties.
Office of Inter-American
Regional Political Affairs