Cablegram 68 NEW DELHI, 21 January 1949, 7.25 p.m.
IMMEDIATE CONFIDENTIAL
1. Many thanks for your 34. [1] I think that the Arab position has been to help India. Egypt is a strong supporter of Australia, and its work in United Nations and congratulated you on statement appearing in morning press. He nominated us to Drafting Committee.
There has been no mention by them of Palestine throughout the private sessions.
2. Drafting Committee has completed draft of first resolution covering recommendations to the Council of action to be taken by it. It is wholly in accord with recommendations we have already made to the Council. Will cable full text this evening. You will realise that it has to come before the full Committee but it will be sufficiently near final product for you to instruct upon.
3. The full Committee this morning discussed the enforcement and continuing organis-ation. We will draft them this afternoon and again there will be nothing we cannot immediately accept. I will cable tentative draft late tonight.
4. If you can see your way, on the basis of these drafts, to instruct regarding final resolutions, subject to no amendments in substance it would be certain to be helpful if you could state in Canberra and I could state at conference conclusion I had received your instructions to support outright resolutions.
5. Your suggestions arrived just prior to the meeting and all will be included in draft; such is the atmosphere of the Conference and Australia’s general standing on Indonesia and in the United Nations there is no danger of regional enforcement outside the Security Council.
6. Nehru and officials are showing much less reserve towards us and all are coming to accept us without undue suspicion. Your statements have helped and it makes me all the more keen on a visit here by you on your way to the United Kingdom to get a firm understanding on the setting up of a regional organisation.
7. On this I am not so sure it would [not] [2] be a good move to accept wider regional organisation because this group seems to be able to keep Arabs in order. The United States Ambassador here agrees the metropolitan powers of the United Kingdom, United States of America, French, Dutch should not be included especially as this conference has proved the ability of independent states in the area to act wisely and correctly.
8. I must say how much it has meant to us to feel that you are watching developments and assisting by public statements and by suggestions. A lot was at stake to begin with, and I think I probably exceeded the instructions which I would have been acting on without your return.
9. This conference is so far most amazing for good common sense and honest purpose amongst the middle and small powers. I have never known an international committee to be so subject to reasoned argument and so little influenced by political or emotional irrelevancies. It is complete answer to criticism and suggest when you announce the resolutions you rub it in. You will have noticed that the Drafting Committee is composed of the four Dominions.
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1 Dispatched on 20 January, it conveyed the text of Evatt’s statement on the Asian Conference in New Delhi (see note 2 to Document 113).
2 Word inserted from a copy on file A5009/2,A7/3/13,ii.
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[AA : A1838, 854/10/4/5]