Memorandum of Telephone Conversation with Secretary of State Dean Acheson and Ambassador of Great Britain Sir Oliver Franks

Extracted text

OCR Page 1 of 2
403 E. O. (E) DEO (E)rand 5(D) or Dept. 1973 MM By NLT- . NARS Date Corf SECHE (gan. 27) 36-a January 29, 1951 MEMORANDUM OF TELEPHONE CONVERSATION TRUMANDAY ARCHIVES **NATIONAL ANO RECORDE c SERVIBE* Participants. Sir Oliver Franks Mr. Acheson The Secretary called Sir Cliver Franks on Saturday, January 27, shortly before 11 a.m. He thanked Sir Oliver for his efforts to help clarify the rather confused situation at the UN. Mr. Acheson sald that he had been talking with Mr. Rusk and Mr. Hickerson and others, and also with the President. He said with regard to paragraph 8 of the US resolution, he was authorizing them to ald language at the end to the eff act that the Collective Measures Committee is authorized to withhold its report if the other Committee is getting along well with its work. Mr. Acheson said that he felt we could go no further than that. He also mentioned that Mr. Jebb's proposals were not acceptable to us and we were not able to go along with them. Sir Oliver asked if there was anything we wanted him to say personally to Mr. Attlee. The Secretary said that he would not suggest that a lot of special messages fly back and forth between the President and Mr. Attlee. Sir Oliver agreed with that point of view. Mr. Acheson said that he had raised this whole matter with the President and the full Cabinet on Friday and that the President and the Cabinet were unanimous in their agreement on our position on the resolution. Mr. Acheson said he thought the whole thing too serious for him to be taking positions without complete Cabinet backing, which we now had. He said that he felt he had reached the end of his elasticity and said that our position was not one taken by just a few people in the State Department but represented an entire government position. The Secretary also mentioned his appearances before the House and Senate Foreign Affairs Committees the preceding day and said that these committees were in support of the position he has taken. He said that some of the Committee members wanted to be