Minute from Eoin MacWhite to Sheila Murphy (Dublin)

To see cable from the Foreign Minister of the Sudanese Government regarding recognition of the Sudan.

A priori it would appear that the Sudan fulfils the usual requirements for international recognition. Its Government has been recognised by the Condominium powers Egypt and Britain who have agreed to Sudanese independence over well defined territory. I am having a separate memorandum prepared outlining briefly the evolution of the Sudanese state.¹

However the Sudan is fundamentally an Arab State and we have withheld recognition from Libya and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan because we feared that such recognition would provoke pressure from Israel to which we accord de facto recognition but withhold de jure recognition pending a satisfactory settlement of the problem of the Holy Places.

It would be invidious to accord recognition to the Sudan before we do so for Libya and Jordan which are older states, unless we can defend our reasons for refusing recognition. Our membership of the UN gives us an added reason for a general reconsideration of our recognition policy in regard to the UN member States which we do not recognise, – Libya, Jordan, Israel, Laos, Cambodia, China and Poland (where we do not recognise the Communist régime but accord recognition to the ‘London Government’). In the case of Poland it would obviously be difficult for the Minister to face the criticism that recognition of the present Warsaw régime would arouse but we could, perhaps, eventually consider withdrawal of our recognition of the London Government as the Portuguese did. It would serve no useful purpose to walk into the Chinese problem at this time.

We already accord a sort of tacit de facto recognition to Libya, Jordan, Laos and Cambodia in that we do not oppose their membership of Specialized Agencies and other international bodies. In doing so we have sometimes made a statement reserving our position on recognition but not in all cases.

In most of these cases we are very much ‘the odd man out’ in not recognising these new states and our attitude is not what might be expected from a country which won its freedom the hard way not so very long ago. While Jordan and Israel may be complicated by our following of a rigid Vatican line, there is no good reason to stall further on Libya. We held out on Laos and Cambodia because of our missionaries in China who have since been repatriated and the Maynooth Mission has withdrawn its objection.

If you agree that the time is ripe for a general clearing of outstanding recognition matters on which there are good grounds for changing our present attitude (i.e. not North and South Korea and Vietnam, East Germany, etc.) I will have up to date memoranda prepared on each case so that we can decide what we will put to the Government.