Cablegram UN802 NEW YORK, 26 November 1946, 1.24 a.m.
MOST IMMEDIATE SECRET
Assembly 245.
Trusteeship.
Your UNY.395 and 404. [1]
1. Immediate action has been taken to gain support by diplomatic means. This will be sustained.
2. In Sub-Committee discussions we have not yielded and will not yield an inch of ground without instructions.
3. We feel there may have been some misunderstanding about procedure. Australian initiative and consistent action have been largely responsible for preventing the sub-committee from slipping into incorrect procedure of formal amendment. The Australian delegation has also given full support to New Zealand throughout and has repeatedly intervened to assist New Zealand and, on occasions, saved the situation.
4. Your message of 25th to Berendsen [2] was immediately conveyed to him and, in our opinion, was most timely and should have a valuable effect. Both on 23rd, with respect to words ‘as an integral part’, and on 25th, in discussion of Article 5, New Zealand delegation offered compromises in matters not considered essential to New Zealand. [3] The result, as you point out, must inevitably be increased pressure and an embarrassment for all mandatories. This has been strongly represented to New Zealand officials at sub-committee meetings 23rd and 25th and in consultations 24th, and will be discussed further with Berendsen.
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1 Document 245.
2 Conveyed in Document 245.
3 Cablegram UN788 of 24 November reported that the New Zealand ‘feeling’, after having offered to substitute the wording ‘as if it were an integral part’ for ‘as an integral part’, was that the latter phrase was ‘not essential to their agreement’; cablegram UN806 of 26 November reported that New Zealand had offered to delete the words ‘and as may be appropriate to the particular circumstances of the territory and its peoples’ from Article 5 of its draft agreement, which dealt with the development of political institutions in Western Samoa.
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[AA:A1838/1, 306/1/4]