Confidential report from Con Cremin to Seán Nunan (Dublin)¹
(Confidential) (105/29bis; 22/54)

When Manac’h² of the Quai d’Orsay came to lunch here on 2nd inst. the conversation turned on Partition.

He told me that London observes a quite remarkable silence on this subject vis á vis the French Ambassador. The Quai d’Orsay has apparently from time to time asked Massigli³ to report on the British attitude towards the problem but he has never got the slightest reaction.

Manac’h expressed the personal opinion that within NATO we would have been able to urge our case against Partition. He is, of course, fully aware of our stand on membership of NATO and was not querying it – nor indeed has he, I think, an unadulterated admiration for that Organisation. His argument was that believing as he does that questions of this kind are best handled inter-governmentally rather than in public (which for him excludes the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe as a useful place to raise the issue), we have at present no international forum in which we can do so because of our continued exclusion from UNO. NATO could, he feels, have provided such a forum. He alluded in this connection to the difficulty we had in the autumn of 1952 about joint aero-naval exercises at Derry,⁴ and expressed the view that if we had belonged to NATO we could have this, and any similar problem that might arise, more easily and smoothly solved. He referred again to the rather ‘brusque’ terms of the draft reply to our representations which had at that time been prepared by the NATO Division of the Ministry (see opening paragraph of my memorandum of 21st October, 1952).⁵ He said that this draft more or less rejected our representations out of hand on the ground that, as things at present stand, England, juridically and in fact, controls the Six County area. Manac’h, however, took the line (approved by his superiors) that there is no reason why, as he put it, France should defend the British position, and he consequently softened considerably the tone of the despatch.