Memorandum of Conversation with Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Foreign Affairs Secretary of the Philippines Carlos Romulo

Miss Asbjornson COPY 246 United States Delegation 316 to the General Assembly of the United Nations SONFIDENTIAL (act 14) October 15, 1952 MEMORANDUM TO s/s General Romulo telephoned the Secretary at the Waldorf Astoria last night. The General was very agitated over reports which he had received that the US Government was planning to issue a statement indicating that the visits of Assistant Secre- tary John Allison, Admiral Radford and other high US governmental officials to Manila were entirely of a routine nature and that no credence could be given to the suggestion that they were there for purposes which might be related to President Quirino's proposal for Pacific Defense Organization. The General indicated that in accordance with the understanding reached during his most recent call on the Secretary in Washington, the Philippine Government had released information that conversations to be held during the visits would touch upon Pacific defense plans. Romulo said that any repudiation of this in an announcement by the US Government would upset President Quirino and place the Philippine Government in an extremely bad position. General Romulo hoped that the Secretary could look into the matter right away with a view to preventing any such American statement. The Secretary told the General that the latter was right in his understanding that it was our intention that the Philippine Government should refer to the visits as related to the discussion of Pacific defense and that we had understood the Philippine Government wound release information along this line. The Secretary told Romulo that he did not see why the US Government had to issue a statement which would negate the effect which the Filipinos hoped to achieve, and that he would speak to the Department about the matter and call General Romulo back. The Secretary then spoke with Acting Assistant Secretary Johnson in Washington and said that he did not favor any release which would upset the result which the Filipinos hoped to gain from the information they were putting out regarding the visits. The Secretary said that he thought we should not make any announcement and that when he called Romulo back he would give the General a "cold shower" and tell him that the Filipinos should make no further announcements which could be misconstrued as giving the visits an importance greater than that now attributed to them. Mr. Johnson said that the Department had been considering making an announcement because they thought the Filipinos were completely overdoing the matter and were going considerably beyond the latitude CONFIDENTIAL which