Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Your telegram 17th March No.68 repeated Wellington No.64.
Palestine.
We agree that the United Nations Charter does not specifically
empower the Secretary-General to summon an ad hoc Committee of the
type proposed but on the other hand there is nothing in Chapter XV
which would specifically debar him from so doing. In fact although
the Secretary-General has asked that this proposal should come
officially from the United Kingdom Government, he originally
suggested it himself, in conversation with the United Kingdom
representative to United Nations as an alternative to summoning a
special assembly to which he objected on the grounds of the
expense.
2. We appreciate however the force of the arguments in your
paragraph 2 about the possibility that the Committee's status
might be challenged in the Assembly and you will see from my
telegram D. No.268 that we are at present considering suggestions
for overcoming this difficulty.
3. As regards your paragraph 3 we consider it essential that
preparatory work should be done before the Assembly meets in
September. It seems most unlikely that the Assembly would be able
to reach any decision on Palestine this year if a fact-finding
committee were not appointed until the Assembly had actually met
and we are anxious to avoid recommendations on the Palestine
question being postponed until the 1948 Assembly.
4. As regards your paragraph 4 objections to placing the Palestine
question before the Security Council under Article 35 are that it
would have to be submitted as a situation or dispute and it would
moreover rest with the Security Council to decide whether the
matter should be referred to the Assembly at all. It would in our
view be applying too narrow a criterion to the Palestine question
to treat it as a dispute or situation. Our object is that as the
United Kingdom Government is in present circumstances no longer
prepared to carry out the Mandate the United Nations should
determine the future of the Mandate the interpretation to be
placed on it and/or the date of its super-session by a Government
of the people of Palestine. The most appropriate body to consider
matter on these lines is clearly the General Assembly which could
do so under Article 10 of the Charter.