My telegram No.323. [1] The Consular Commission met again
yesterday afternoon and Tsiang reported on his interview with
Cochran and Schuurman. He said that Cochran had made it clear that
the Committee of Good Offices in no way regarded itself as
superseded by the Consular Commission and would be unwilling to
release its facilities to the Commission; Schuurman had called in
his legal advisers who gave opinion that the Security Council's
resolution to the Commission [2] cancelled its instructions to the
Committee and he had said that he thought the same facilities
would now be available to the Commission as there had been in
1947.

2. There w[ere] considerabl[y] divergent views within the
Commission as to the respective functions of the Committee and the
Commission and their jurisdiction over military observers. Finally
it was decided to meet again on January 5th and then to cable to
the Security Council asking for clarification of the position and
[accounting] [3] for Commission's inactivity.

3. Throughout the meeting the French member [4] continued to argue
that the Commission could not ignore the force of the Committee's
resolution and should accordingly withdraw its military observers
from the Committee or make some arrangement to share them and
proceed to investigate and report straight away.

4. The Netherlands' reactions to the Commission have been
favourable and the
local press has pointed out that an 'objective' report can be
expected which will counter Committee's reporting.

5. I passed your telegram No.340 [5] to Critchley for a reply.