Canberra, 23 March 1959
- SECRET
Geneva Conference on the Discontinuance of Nuclear Weapons1
Your telegram 750.2
Our position on membership of a preparatory commission as given in our savingram 26 of 11th December was ‘If a preparatory commission (as envisaged by the United Kingdom) is set up and there is a membership of more than the three present nuclear powers our claim for inclusion cannot be contested’. The United Kingdom agreed to support this claim for inclusion if action on Australian territory was at issue.
[matter omitted]
- If, as now seems likely, posts will only be set up in the territories of the U.S.A., United Kingdom and U.S.S.R. (at least in the first stage}—and the preparatory commission is to be limited to three on this basis, we would not (subject to further advice concerning the South Pacific) expect to press our claim for original membership. Of course if the three-power preparatory commission did decide later that posts in Australia would be necessary in the first stage we would then have to decide in the circumstances at the time whether our requirement of full discussion and consultation in regard to any proposal actually to establish a post (see paragraph 5 below) could be met without our being formally included in the preparatory commission.
[matter omitted]
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Regarding the reference above to the South Pacific, we would welcome information as and when available as to whether any of the three powers intends that there should be posts in territories adjacent to Australia.
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Regarding the establishment of posts in Australia, our position as authorised by the Minister and communicated to the United Kingdom and United States last October was—
‘The United Kingdom (United States) Government will recognise that it would be extremely difficult for the Australian Government to accede to an agreement entailing the establishment of detection posts in its territory without having had adequate opportunities to participate in the negotiations in which the arrangements were determined. We therefore desire to have an understanding now with both the United Kingdom and the United States that immediately the actual establishment of one or more inspection posts in Australia is proposed, they will insist that Australia be invited to participate in the discussion of all aspects of the proposal’.
[matter omitted]
[NAA: A3092, TS221/3/3/1/3/1 part 5]
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Although the USSR had resumed testing the day after negotiations in Geneva began on 31 October 1958, negotiating parties of the three nuclear nations met almost continuously from that time to August 1959, when Khrushchev stated that the Soviet Union was ‘ready to accept the most solemn obligation not to be the first to conduct any further tests of nuclear weapons’. A system of international controls was still to be established, however, and to that end negotiations resumed on 27 October 1959. The US and UK delegates, arguing that agreement had virtually been reached on means of detecting surface, atmospheric and underwater tests, called for the immediate conclusion of a treaty along these lines without waiting for a consensus on the more difficult matter of underground nuclear explosions and high-altitude tests. The USSR, however, rejected this suggestion outright and negotiations were adjourned until 12 January 1960. Current Notes, vol. 30, 1959, pp. 602-4. ↩
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Not published. ↩