Washington, 11 August 1971
Secret
Marshall Green (Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs) spoke to me today about a telegram which had been received from the American Embassy in Canberra. He said that strictly speaking he should not be talking to me on it as the American Embassy in Canberra would not want this done. But he felt that he should say a word to me personally about it because we had been working very closely together and he did not want a false situation to develop.
He said that the telegram referred to Mr A.T. Griffith,1 who had told the American Embassy that he had been recalled to Canberra from the Imperial Defence College to undertake duty as First Assistant Secretary in the Prime Minister’s Department in charge of international relations. Mr Griffith said he was at present engaged in preparing a brief for the Prime Minister to use during discussion of international relations at the forthcoming session of the Australian Parliament. During the week Mr Griffith had been twice in touch with the United States Embassy to say that there was great concern in high levels of the Government at possible United States courses in regard to China, and he said that the Prime Minister was worried that the United States might suddenly change its policy on relations with the Government of Taiwan and leave the Prime Minister out on a limb. On one occasion Mr Griffith had made mention of a position paper which he said stated that the Australian Government should put itself in a position where it could withdraw recognition of the Government of the Republic of China after the United Nations General Assembly.2 (There was some mention in this connection of President Nixon’s visit to Peking, but I am not clear whether the position paper said that the Australian Government’s action to withdraw recognition of the Republic of China should be taken before or after President Nixon’s visit. I am also not clear whether the position paper is one being prepared by Mr Griffith himself, or an existing paper prepared in the normal way.)
I said that I thought that consultations between Australia and the United States were working satisfactorily at present. I could throw no light on what the position paper might be. Both our countries were, of course, working together on various contingency plans for handling the Chinese item in the forthcoming General Assembly. I could see possibilities of divergences at a later date, and one example might be during the voting in the United Nations General Assembly when decisions might have to be taken suddenly on the spot and there might not be time for adequate consultation. But I thought that basically consultations between the two Governments were good, in Washington on the Chinese question generally, and in New York on United Nations tactics.
You might like to have a word with Jack Bunting. Presumably the Prime Minister’s Department make a full record of their conversations with diplomatic missions, just as is the practice in the Department of Foreign Affairs, and it would be useful for this embassy to be given records of those conversations in the normal way.
[DFAT: WALLER PAPERS]
1 A.T. Griffith was, in 1971, First Assistant Secretary, External Relations and Defence Division, Prime Minister’s Department.
2 Not found.