235. Letter From the Representative to the United Nations (Stevenson) to Secretary of State Rusk1
Dear Dean,
As you may have noticed from some of our recent telegrams, the Secretary-General and some of his senior staff officers, particularly Ralph Bunche, are becoming increasingly sensitive about any appearance that their actions are dictated or unduly influenced by the United States. The Secretary-General has as you know proved remarkably cooperative and has been willing to accept our counsel to a degree which none of us could have predicted when he was first elected. His guiding principles and main objectives are close to ours and I am confident he will continue his cooperation providing we do not embarrass him by revealing how close it is. As you well know he must, as the world’s principal international civil servant, maintain a public posture of impartiality and, to the extent he may have felt he has been publicly exposed as cooperating too intimately with the United States, he may come to feel he has either to reduce that cooperation or to balance it by actions more pleasing to the Soviet bloc.
Unfortunately a number of cases have recently occurred in which we have either taken up with other Governments or revealed to the press matters of UN concern on which we assumed his cooperation would be forthcoming but about which he either had not yet been consulted or had not reached a decision.
For example, in a number of our diplomatic consultations concerning the Congo, concerning the Bunker mediation on West New Guinea, concerning a UN Representative to Thailand-Cambodia and, most recently, concerning Yemen, the Department has on occasion moved rapidly ahead before he was aware of or had approved our plans. As a result he had been asked from time to time by other Delegations about plans which are supposedly his but about which he is only vaguely aware and which are in actual fact our plans for him. This is understandably embarrassing to him.
Similarly, press statements and background briefings in Washington or elsewhere have sometimes revealed prematurely the [Page 520] Secretary-General’s plans or our plans for cooperation with him in ways which have not only been embarrassing but have occasionally resulted in his abandoning a course we favored which he had intended to pursue. There were several such cases in the closing stage of the Katanga affair, at least one in connection with Yemen, and most recently a statement by the Cleveland Mission in Leopoldville which gave Bunche the mistaken impression the Mission was injecting itself between UNOC and UNNY.
The problem is not really one of substance, since the Secretary-General has generally approved and appreciated what we have been doing and has been more than willing to cooperate if given time and appropriate diplomatic cover. I suggest, therefore, that we refrain, despite the urgency of a particular problem, from negotiating a solution with other Governments before the Secretary-General has approved our proposed solution and requested our cooperation. In the second place we must exercise extreme caution in public statements (including backgrounding) on matters on which we are working in cooperation with the UN, and particularly on matters in which we have asked the Secretary-General to play a leading role.
Above all we must avoid the natural temptation to let it be known that a projected future action or a successful past action by the Secretary-General was really our idea in the first place. A few more such revelations will, I fear, make him shy away from future U.S. assignments for him no matter how sensible and desirable they may be.
It would be most helpful to me if you could at some point review this problem with the senior officers in the Department and ask them to pass the word down through the ranks. I am sure the main difficulty arises from the fact that it is not always appreciated how circumspect we have to be about our close relationship with an international official of the stature and responsibility of the Secretary-General.
Sincerely,
- Source: Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Subjects Series, United Nations (General), 1/63–4/63, Box 311. Personal and Confidential. An attached memorandum from Schlesinger to Bundy, February 9, reads: “I attach a copy of a letter from Governor Stevenson to the Secretary of State discussing an issue which is causing certain problems in our relationship with U Thant.”↩
- Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩