DDA/73 1/85/1
N Wenban-Smith Esq
United Nations Department
Foreign and Commonwealth Office
London
SW1
49
200
No Wotton
interesting but depressis
pise conside with previous
hapes
10 December
UNITED NATIONS AD HOC COMMITTEE FOR THE FAR EAST
Since my return from the Far East, I have been preoccupied with other business and have therefore done nothing to follow it up, except what was essential. I propose letting the official report speak for itself when it is published (presumably early next year), but I shall be glad to supplement it then if any of your Departments, which were good enough to brief me before I went, would like me to do so. For the time being, there are some alient points, particularly on matters which will not find a place in the report, that I should bring to your attention (I have in mind the impending visit of Harvey kellman).
As you know, the organisation of the tour by the United Nations was incompetent. This incompetence was manifest in the late date when they began to make the arrange- ments (which contributed to our failure to visit Burma and Nepal, both of whom pleaded inconvenient timing) and, especially, in the change of plan at the very last moment which required members (rather than the United Nations) to pay their own
subsistence.
This delayed the effective start of the Committee's work well into the first week in Bangkok, since only the Australians, the Secretary and myself arrived as planned and the rest were arriving spasmodically up to the day when we left Bangkok. The Committee was supposed to have its travel and accommodation arrangements made by Miss Mountfield, the United Nations Cutposted Officer in Bangkok, who was alleged to have an intimate knowledge of the region. I can only say that we got round the Far East despite rather than because of her efforts. The only thing she succeeded in doing was in not losing our tickets. The Secretary of the Committee (Mr R Tufnell of the United Nations Narcotics Division, an elderly ex-Colonial servant, whose last post was Commissioner of Customs in Singapore) did valiant work in producing first drafts of the report which we prepared on each country. But he had to type these himself on a derelict portable typewriter and UNDF gave us virtually no secretarial assistance. Had the Australians not brought an officer who knew the region well and who was enormously energetic and had not the Australian Missions assisted in virtually all of the capitals we went to, I do not believe that we would have got round the Far East and I am certain that we would not have finished our report. bulk of this was written in the last three days in Singapore, where there was no United Nations presence whatever (we were not even met at the airport nor did the Secretariat know what hotel we were in - the same happened in Hong Kong and Manila but the Governments there were better organised all of the secretarial work was provided by the Australian High Commission or by stenographers whom the Australians hired.
The
The Far Eastern members of the Committee, partly because of their lack of fluency in English and partly because they showed limited interest in any but their own
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