Canberra, 13 December 1950
748. Secret Immediate
Personal for Officer from A.S. Watt.
… You will no doubt have seen from repeated references in speeches and telegrams that the Minister’s view is that negotiation and settlement of the Korean issue is an essential preliminary to negotiation and agreement (if practicable) with the Peking regime on such other Far Eastern issues as representation of Communist China in the United Nations and Formosa.
2. While, no doubt, an agreement limited to Korea may at some stage merge into agreement on other issues, at present we�do not see the answer to the blunt American statement that agreement on representation in the United Nations and Formosa before settlement of the Korean issue would appear to set a premium on aggression.1
3. We are still somewhat uncertain as to the precise attitude of United Kingdom on Formosa. For the first time today we have learnt from one American source that there was agreement between Truman and Attlee upon the terms which should not be paid as a price for peaceful solution of Korean problem ‘such as Formosa, Indo–China and participation in Japanese peace treaty discussions by Communist Chinese representatives’. The same source informed us that the United Kingdom had agreed with the United States as to the strategic importance of the island chain, including Formosa, in the defence of the Western Pacific, and that [the]1 ‘British had indicated they were strongly moved by American arguments as to the importance of not allowing Formosa to fall into Chinese Communist hands now’.
4. As we have received confirmation of these statements from no other source, British or American, we would be glad of�any advice you could send us tending to confirm them or the reverse.
[NAA: A1838, 519/311, i]
1 In an interim reply to Spender’s Cablegram 734 (Document 22), Officer cabled on 12 December that: ‘My own view is that the attitude of the United States at the moment is quite unreal. I can see few practical arguments against a cease–fire, and any cease–fire implies eventually further negotiation on “other problems”. It is inevitable that Formosa and Chinese representation will arise in those negotiations, but it seems to me that it should be possible to postpone such matters for the present’.
1 Editorial insert.