Atomic Energy.

On the morning of Tuesday, 8th February, I had a private and informal talk with the United Kingdom delegation on plans for a meeting of the Atomic Energy Commission as well as for the Six-Power talks. Shone,¹ Lawford,² Falla³ and Cole⁴ were present on the United Kingdom side. Ignatieff and Starnes were with me. It appeared that the United Kingdom delegation are still trying to clarify the views of the various delegations here before requesting specific instructions from London. They stressed that they wish to regard the question of the meeting of the Atomic Energy Commission and its programme of work in the context of the over-all position which now exists between the Western Powers and the Soviet Union. Their thought is to maintain the unity of approach on the part of the Western Powers which, in their opinion, might be impaired if debates took place before views had been inter-changed and correlated between the Western Powers.

2. For my part, I indicated that I was indeed glad to have an opportunity of interchanging views and fully appreciated the importance of maintaining unity among the Western Powers. I took the occasion to point out that the Assembly resolution required that the Commission should meet and that, at the next Assembly, we would be in a most unfortunate position if we had not used our best endeavours to carry out what was clearly the intent of the great majority of the members of the United Nations. I pointed out that we were only required to undertake work which we deem to be "practicable" and "useful" and, in this connection, I said that I thought that at this time it would be useful and practicable to undertake a consolidation and clarification of the majority proposals contained in the three reports of the Atomic Energy Commission. I said that I thought some "principles" as devised by Derose might well evolve from this process of clarification (see my savingsgram No. 1 of 28th January, 1949).1 Further, as the Soviet delegates had repeatedly raised the possibilities of approaching closer to agreement with the majority view in the consideration of the question of quotas, I thought it was essential that we should not deny the Soviet representative an opportunity to explain fully what they had in mind. I said that I fully shared the views expressed by Derose that it would not be useful to proceed with the consideration of "staffing or organization" at this time. I emphasized that we were anxious to have further private meetings to try to harmonize our views, but I did feel that the calling of the Atomic Energy Commission should not be unduly delayed.

¹ Sir Terence Shone, Adjoint au représentant permanent du Royaume-Uni aux Nations Unies; reprtésenant alternatif à la Commission de 1'énergie atomique et à la Commission des armes conventionnels.
Sir Terence Shone, Deputy to Permanent Representative of United Kingdom at the United Nations; Alternate Representative to the Atomic Energy Commission and the Commission for Conventional Armaments.

²V.G. Lawford, représentant allematif du Royaume-Uni à la Commission des armes conventionnels.
V.G. Lawford. Alternate Representative of United Kingdom to Commission for Conventional Armaments.

³P.S. Falla, délégation du Royaume-Uni aux Nations Unies.
P.S. Falls, Delegation of United Kingdom to United Nations.

⁴David L. Cole, conseiller, délégation du Royaume-Uni aux Nations Unies,
David L. Cole, Adviser, Delegation of United Kingdom to United Nations.