Cablegram 663 WASHINGTON, 27 May 1946, 10.48 a.m.
SECRET
Your 783, F.A.0. Conference. [1]
1. Our 662 [2] reports results on the new organization and is not inconsistent with your 783. On production and export policies your general instructions are being followed.
2. On membership of the Central Committee we did not succeed in gaining Dr. Evatt’s objective of equal status with Canada.
National representatives previously hostile to the Combined Food Board who have been at the U.N.R.R.A. Council and this conference have been convinced that the Combined Food Board did the best possible job except in explaining itself and insisted on expressing appreciation by making the three Governments ex officio members. Dr. Evatt has been informed. We shall probably get elected when the new council meets but only by increasing the membership to at least twelve.
3. For preparing the long range programme F.A.0. will consult the Economic and Social Council and report to a F.A.0. Conference expected to meet in Copenhagen late in August after the U.N.R.R.A.
Council meets in Paris. Reports will go to the United Nations Assembly in September.
4. Bulcock will telegraph personally as soon as possible.
Argentina attended the final session of the Committee on organization and will speak at the final Plenary Meeting Monday.
[3]
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1 Document 269.
2 Dispatched 25 May. It reported agreement to establish the International Emergency Food Council along the lines of the U.S.- U.K.-Canadian proposals (see Document 267 and notes thereto) except that the composition of the central committee was to be determined by the Council itself (an Australian initiative), membership of commodity committees was to be open to all countries ‘which have an important interest in the international trade of the commodity in question’, and membership of the Council open to all governments represented on any commodity committee.
3 Argentina and the Soviet Union were not formally represented at the conference.
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[AA:A1067, ER46/4/14]