CO129-394 - Governor Sir May & Public Offices - 1912 [12] — Page 490

[This Document is the Property of His Britannic Majesty's Government.]

479

CO

OPIUM.

CONFIDENTIAL

2018

مي

[January 15.j

SECTION 20 JAN 12

[1885]

No. 1.

British Delegates to the International Opium Conference to Sir Edward Grey.— (Received January 15.)

(No. 9.) Sir,

The Hague, January 13, 1912. IN continuation of our telegram of the 11th instant on the subject of the procedure in regard to the ratification of, and adhesion to, the convention to be framed by the Opium Conference, we have the honour to report that the matter has been under consideration by a select committee of the conference ("Comité de Rédaction"), of which Sir William Collins is a member. That committee has, without thereby compromising in any way the freedom of action of the delegations to which its members belong, prepared a preliminary draft, in respect of which it has been materially assisted by the suggestions of their Excellencies M. van Swinderen, Minister for Foreign Affairs, and M. Asser, the eminent international jurist, and this draft, after further consideration by the committee, is to be put before the conference as a whole. We enclose two copies of the draft, in which we have numbered the paragraphs for convenience of reference. The first contains the draft as it now stands; the second embodies manuscript amendments which Sir William Collins will put forward at the next meeting of the committee.

Taking the original draft first, you will observe that all reference to the word "adhesion" disappears, and that the procedure contemplated is to obtain the signature of the representatives of outside Powers to the convention, which would thus put such Powers on the same footing with the original signatories. Then would come ratification by the signatory Powers thus reinforced; then the coming into force of the convention; and then the framing by the Powers affected of the requisite legislation. Finally, if within two years of the signing of the original convention the universal ratification thus contemplated has not been obtained, a fresh conference of all the signatory Powers, original and supplementary, would be called to consider how far the convention may, nevertheless, be carried out.

We cannot consider the draft as it at present stands a satisfactory solution of the practical difficulties with which we have been throughout beset owing to the small number of Powers at present participating. But we think that it could be made so with the amendments above referred to, the more important of which we now proceed to discuss:

1. It is obvious that under the procedure proposed matters might be long delayed by a prompt refusal of one or more outside Powers to sign, or by delay on the part of outside Powers in indicating whether they will sign or not. To meet this, we propose (our paragraph 4a) that, if by the 31st December, 1912, the signature of all such Powers has not been obtained, the Powers that have signed shall send representatives to The Hague to consider whether they may not, nevertheless, proceed to the stage of ratifications.

2. Having regard to the provisions of succeeding paragraphs, there is no reason for requiring in paragraph 8 a gap of six months between the completion of the ratifications and the coming into force of the convention. We propose, therefore, to reduce this to two months.

3. We propose to add to paragraph 9 a clause stating that the date at which necessary legislation shall come into force shall be the subject of agreement between the signatory Powers. This will meet the point taken in your telegram of the 12th instant, and the Board of Trade letter enclosed in your despatch No. 16 of the 13th instant, that restrictions should not be enforced until each State has had an opportunity of learning the extent to which other Powers are prepared to move in the same direction. We may say here that we do not think it feasible in this connection to require each State to communicate to other States the terms of such legislation, &c. Such intercommunication of laws and statistics is contemplated by one of the convention articles, but obviously this can have no effect until the convention as a whole comes into force. Obviously, too, it is easy to obtain the details of proposed foreign legislation through the ordinary diplomatic channels.

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