DEPARTMENT OF STATE Memorandum of Conversation
Date: March 29, 1949
Subject: Courtesy Call on the Secretary by Sir Ramaswami Mudaliar
Participants: Sir Ramaswami Mudaliar Mr. Dean Acheson - Secretary of State Mr. Joseph S. Sparks - SOA
Copies to: E, FE, EUR, UNA, S/S, NEA, SOA
After recalling our meeting in 1946, Sir Ramaswami Mudaliar spoke in general of his concept of the functions of a Chairman of a United Nations group. He said that in order to be successful a good Chairman should forget that he is a national of any country and should handle the problems before the group objectively and with a moral clarity and force divorced from the point of view of the country from which he comes. I agreed with him and mentioned my own experience as Chairman of the first session of the UNRRA Council in Atlantic City in 1943 during which I vacated the chair on the only occasion on which I spoke as American representative.
On the subject of Indonesia, Sir Ramaswami said that India's interest arose not only out of sympathy for the nationalistic aspirations of the Indonesians but also out of deep concern over the growth of Communism in the Far East. He said that he understood the domestic political problems confronting the Dutch in compromising on the Indonesian question but hoped that an urgent solution could be found. I said that I felt genuine progress had been made during the last ten days on the Indonesian case and that I shared his evaluation of the importance of timing.
In this connection I pointed out that one of the serious situations which would confront the Indonesians is their lack of personnel experienced in administrative and economic fields. Sir Ramaswami also thought this a serious problem and mentioned the Burmese situation as another example of a country lacking the traditional strength of administrative and economic personnel such as India has.
When I asked Sir Ramaswami what his opinion of the work being done by the UN was, he said that he felt that definite progress was being made. He thought that the world is too prone to overlook the many real accomplishments, particularly of the subordinate agencies of the UN, and to concentrate on the more spectacular Security Council which, as he pointed out, still has on its agenda every problem with which it has ever been seized.
Sir Ramaswami referred to Point Four of the President's Inaugural Address and said that in connection with its implementation he felt that it would be important to establish a categorization of the regions involved according to their degree of independent sovereignty. In particular he felt that it is important that Point Four aid should not be given to dependent areas through established colonial channels and that some type of international group approach to these areas would be much more effective and acceptable to nations such as India which are devoted to self- determination by colonial peoples. I mentioned the Caribbean Commission and described some of its functions to ask him if that was the sort of international approach which he had in mind. He replied that it was..
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