Cablegrams 199, 356, 1394 CANBERRA, 4 December 1947 SECRET
Soviet Proposals for Japanese Peace Conference You should know that on 2nd December we addressed Note to Soviet Legation here referring to recent Chinese proposals for Preliminary Conference of eleven countries with F.E.C. voting system and stating that we had learned nature of their own recent proposals to China, United States and United Kingdom for Special Session of Council of Foreign Ministers representing those four countries in January, 1948, to consider question of preparing Peace Settlement.
2. Note stated that we considered such a procedure inappropriate since it does not take account of Australia’s status as one of principal belligerents in Pacific War, and added that our desire for full representation on basis of equality with any other state is based not only on our rights, but also on our desire to offer fullest co-operation in reaching settlement acceptable to all parties and to contribute to economic recovery of war-devastated countries. An instance of this desire we quoted our recent offer made in F.E.C. to return major portion of Australian share of Japanese reparations to pool for distribution among other claimant countries.
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[AA : A1068, 47/10/61/10, i]