Extracts from a confidential report from Frederick H. Boland
to Seán Murphy (Dublin)
(Confidential)

[matter omitted]

Our present disposition is not to intervene in the disarmament debate at all. The major points at issue are very complicated and have a long background of contention and disagreement. Insofar as they relate to nuclear and atomic warfare, they can be of interest only to the great Powers, since other countries are not in a position to manufacture armaments of that type on their own. In view of our lack of military strength and detachment from existing military alliances, no useful purpose is served, in our view, by intervening in the debate unless we have some very new or striking idea to contribute, and nothing of that kind has occurred to us so far. In the absence of some such contribution, our intervention might only too easily make us appear to be lecturing others on matters of more immediate concern to them than to us.

We attended the discussion on French Togoland in the Fourth Committee this morning to support France against what turned out to be a rather half-hearted and unsuccessful attack on her by the Arab and certain other Afro-Asian states led by Mr. Krishna Menon. Although, as you know, we have not been taking part in the work of this Committee, we were asked by both the United States and French delegations to lend our support on this issue. Having carefully examined the texts involved – and, to a large extent, what was involved was a trial of strength between the Afro-Asian and the European-American blocs as much as any matter of principle – we came to the conclusion that the case was one in which we could properly support France and her European and American friends. Mr. Murphy,² therefore, attended the Committee and voted accordingly in the seven or eight ballots which were taken on the matter. In the result, France was supported by practically all the European, Latin-American and Commonwealth votes and the opposition was, to a large extent, confined to the Communist bloc, the Arab States and a number of members of the Afro-Asian group.

I lunched today with Mr. Jean Soustelle³ and Mr. Guiringaud⁴ of the French delegation. The Permanent Representative of Sweden to the United Nations⁵ and the Secretary-General of the Government of Algeria were also present. Discussion at the lunch was almost entirely confined to the question of Algeria. M. Soustelle and M. Guiraingaud set out at length the French point of view on the problem on lines with which we are already familiar, and I explained to them that, in our circumstances, it was impossible for us not to sympathise with the demands of the Algerian people for self-determination and the recognition of their nationality. Adopting the line of the Minister’s speech in the general debate of the Assembly, however, I said that we felt that the best solution of the problem was an agreement freely negotiated between the French Government and the people of Algeria, and we did not think that any action which the United Nations could take could supply as satisfactory a solution as an agreement of that kind. As you know, the French delegation walked out of the Assembly last year [when] it proceeded to discuss the problem of Algeria. I gathered from M. Soustelle and M. Guiraingaud that they did not intend to take a similar line this year. They proposed instead to explain their own point of view about Algeria fully and were prepared to listen to other delegations expressing their views which, they recognised, might be in sharp conflict with their own. What would create a serious problem for them, they explained, was not the fact of the problem being discussed at the Assembly but any resolution containing recommendations amounting to an intervention by the United Nations between the French Government and the people of Algeria.

I repeated that, as I had said, we would like to see the French Government coming to terms with the forces of nationalism in Algeria and we were convinced that an agreement freely negotiated on that basis would be a far better solution than any settlement the United Nations could impose or suggest. I intimated that we were likely to take that line if we intervened in the discussion on the Algerian problem and M. Soustelle and M. Guiraingaud gave me to understand that there would be no objection at all from their point of view if we did so.

[matter omitted]

The Assembly is now, for all intents and purposes, in Committee and the Plenary Sessions are unlikely to begin again for another week or ten days. We had a delegation meeting on Saturday to discuss what political matters due to come before Committees we should concentrate on. We tentatively decided to intervene on the questions of Cyprus, Algeria, the Soviet complaint against the United States of intervention in Eastern Europe, and West Irian. We decided to hold off the questions of disarmament – as explained above – and of Apartheid in South Africa. There is some possibility, I believe, of the question of the admission of South Korea and Vietnam to membership of the United Nations coming before the Special Political Committee.