Niné
CONFIDENTIAL
watertight for HMG would be accepted by the UN as a "full measure of self-government"? My answer is a cautious "yes", provided that such a constitution could be validated by "an act of self-determination" be it a referendum or an election with the constitution as a main issue, observed by the UN. However, we would be breaking new ground for the UK in seeking to delete non-independent territories from the list and there might be some opposition to a similar departure for the UN in agreeing that territories which are still dependent in some aspects of their internal affairs should be deleted. (If there had been a ministerial statement on the lines you are envisaging, and if it were agreed that we should then begin a new phase of our cooperation with the Committee of 24, I would wish, as a preliminary step, to take further private soundings of the Chairman of the Committee of 24, Salim, and his likely successor, Abdulah, of Trinidad.)
Success or failure would ultimately be in the hands of the populations concerned and their elected representatives, but from the UN angle there would be two main problems the constitution representing the final stage of advance and the procedures for UN verification.
8. Resolution 1541, which was adopted in 1960 as a corollary to the Declaration on Decolonisation contained in Resolution 1514, in order to give guidance on when decolonisation has been achieved, is now coming back into fashion. It prescribes integration or association as valid alternatives, under certain conditions, to emergence as a sovereign independent state. It has fallen readily to the hands of Indonesia and its supporters to justify the military takeover of East Timor, and this has added to its bad name. It contains some helpful points, but does not provide for all foreseeable arrangements. We should not try to squeeze our "solutions" into it, but should rely on five arguments (there may be more to show that a given constitution equals decolonisation, even if it is less than full internal self-government:-
(1)
that it has been devised locally; this points either to a local select committee on the constitution, or to local politicians adopting your proposals as their own;
-4-
CONFIDENTIAL
/ (2) that