Note CANBERRA, 12 December 1946
SECRET
The Embassy of the United States of America presents its compliments to the Department of External Affairs of the Commonwealth Government of Australia and has the honor to transmit herewith the reply of the Department of State to the question concerning MANUS raised in conversation on November 12, 1946, between the Minister of External Affairs and the Ambassador. [1]
The Department of State has referred to the occasion of the Minister’s visit, when the latter raised the question of the joint rights of use of MANUS in exchange for similar Australian rights at GUAM. [2] The Department states that this proposal was and is unacceptable to the United States Government. The Department of State has also referred to the offer made to the Minister of External Affairs of such rights at CANTON ISLAND and in AMERICAN SAMOA in exchange for similar rights at MANUS.
Likewise, the Department of State has referred to a preliminary draft of a suggested base agreement for MANUS, handed to the Australian Embassy in Washington on March 14, 1946. [3] The Department of State now states that it will be glad to enter into discussions in Washington, at any time convenient to the Commonwealth Government, with a view to early agreement as to American use of MANUS, and to the inclusion in the same of a provision for similar Australian use of CANTON ISLAND and AMERICAN SAMOA, with, however, a further provision that the United States Government shall not be financially obligated at MANUS.
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1 The U.S. Ambassador, Robert Butler, cabled a record of the conversation to Byrnes on 13 November in which he noted that Evatt ‘expressed desire for arrangements for mutual use of facilities [at Manus] and for discussion as to financing same, saying that, to satisfy his Parliament, Australia must have arrangements for at least token right for mutual use of facilities in at least one American base’. See U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1946, vol. I, pp. 680-1.
2 See in particular Documents 1 and 3.
3 Volume IX, Document 127.
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[AA:A6494 T1, SPTS/1/5]