NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
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DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Memorandum of Conversation
| style="vertical-align:top;" SUBJECT: | Desirability of French Government Bringing Indochina Situation to the United Nations. |
| PARTICIPANTS: | Mr. Pierre Millet - Counselor, French Embassy |
| Mr. Lacy = PSA |
| American Embassy Paris |
| American Legation Saigon |
| COPIES TO: | FE | |
| EUR | ||
| UNA | - Mr. Hickerson | |
| O | - Mr. Matthews | |
| S/A | - Ambassador Jessup |
Mr. Millet asked to see me during the afternoon of October 14. Daring the course of conversation on the military situation in Indochina (see Memorandum of Conversation entitled "Military Situation in Indochina", October 14) Mr. Millet said that his Ambassador had asked him to secure my entirely personal and unofficial views on the attitude of the Department toward the desirability of the French Government bringing the Indochina situation, in some unspecified manner, to the United Nations. He seemed to imply by several elliptical statements that either General MacArthur or the Department might consider that the success of the United Nations operation in Korea argued for a reproduction of the same operation in Indochina.
I replied that any views I might express were entirely my own and that, as he knew, this subject could be more profitably discussed with Mr. Hickerson. The rest of my remarks were designed to convey to Mr. Millet the idea that: (1) the decision as to whether to take the Indochina situation to the United Nations lay with the French Government and not with the United States. (2) I did not think that the Department had developed, during the last few weeks as Mr. Millet implied, a sentiment in favor of the French submission of the Indochina situation to the United Nations; that so far as I knew the Department continued to adhere to the position in respect of this problem agreed on between the United States, French and British delegations during the course of their discussions preliminary to the Foreign Ministers Conferences in New York. (3) United Nations activity in Indochina seemed to me
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