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Australian Delegation, United Nations, to Department of External Affairs

Cablegram UN948 NEW YORK, 8 December 1946, 8.08 p.m.

SECRET

Assembly 366. Your UNY470.

(1) Our immediately following telegram [1] gives the text of Trusteeship agreement as finally approved by Subcommittee. This is text as originally submitted [2] together with new Article 8 (see paragraph 6 of Assembly 359 and paragraph 7 of Assembly 329 [3]).

(2) The Subcommittee has still to give final vote on preamble. No proposal for amendment has been adopted with regard to preambles.

In other agreements preamble recites that Assembly has satisfied itself that in pursuance of Article 79 of the Charter the states directly concerned have agreed upon the term of Trusteeship. This is not recited in our preamble. It has been suggested that these words should be omitted from the other preambles but this suggestion has not yet been acted on pending some decision as to states directly concerned.

(3) The Soviet proposal for amendment in Article 4 which was recommended by Subcommittee was to insert a full stop after ‘integral part of Australia’, to delete the next word ‘and’ and to commence the next sentence with the following words ‘insofar as this does not conflict with the terms of the present agreement and with the Charter of the United Nations the Administering authority’.

(4) Full text of Article 4, incorporating above amendment is as follows:-

Begins:-

The Administering authority will be responsible for the peace, order, good Government and defence of the territory and for this purpose will have the same powers of legislation, administration and jurisdiction in and over the territory as if it were an integral part of Australia. Insofar as this does not conflict with the terms of the present agreement and with the Charter of the United Nations, the Administering authority will be entitled to apply to the territory, subject to such modifications as it deems desirable, such laws of the Commonwealth of Australia as it deems appropriate to the needs and conditions of the territory. Ends.

(5) United States proposal for amendment of Article 5 was to delete ‘in its opinion’ in last part of the Article.

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1 Cablegram UN947 (Assembly 367), dispatched 8 December. On file AA:A4311, BOX 481.

2 See Document 55.

3 Documents 287 and 275 respectively.

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[AA:A1838/2, 852/13/4, ii]