18081950--177 Text of the Telegram dated 18 August 1950 from the United Nations Representative for India and Pakistan Mr. Owen Dixon to the Prime Minister of India Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru

18081950--177 Text of the Telegram dated 18 August 1950 from the United Nations Representative for India and Pakistan Mr. Owen Dixon to the Prime Minister of India Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru

Thank you for your message sent 16 August. I had not thought that in a plan for partition a provision for setting up, in a limited plebiscite area, an administrative body to carry on the functions of government in that area during the period of the plebiscite could be opposed to any stand previously taken by India. Once the territory of the State of Jammu and Kashmir outside the limited area is divided under such a plan between India and Pakistan, each obtains an independent legal title to the part allotted to it. The occupation by Pakistan of the territory allotted to it would be in virtue of the title which partition would give it and could not be described as that of an aggressor. Which party to the partition is to have the area reserved for the plebiscite would, under such a plan, depend upon the vote of the inhabitants instead of the immediate operation of the agreement, and I do not understand how in such settlement the doctrine that Pakistan is an aggressor having no legitimate interest could continue to apply.

The United Nations body with the Plebiscite Administrator at its head would derive its powers from the Government of the State, in the same way as might any other provincial or district administration. Elsewhere in the State the existing State Government would exercise its full authority, except in the territory allocated in the partition to Pakistan. In many respects the ordinary working of the machinery of the State would go on in the plebiscite area, but the United Nations Administration would be in control. The view that the lawful government of the State would be superseded does not appear to me to take sufficient account of these considerations or of the relative size of the area involved. When, at the conference between yourself, the Prime Minister of Pakistan and myself at New Delhi, I put forward the proposal that to ensure the freedom and fairness of the overall plebiscite the government of the State should be temporarily entrusted to a body of administrators representing the United Nations, you advanced similar objections. But apart altogether from the answers to them which I then submitted to you, they do not appear to me to apply to partition and a vote in a limited area.

I have always insisted that the freedom of the plebiscite from intimidation or unfairness, and from suspicion of intimidation or unfairness, must be secured at all hazards, and I believe that I have made it clear that I think that very real dangers of that kind exist, from which it must be guarded. The establishment of a temporary administrative body of the United Nations in a limited area to insure the removal of all suspicion that the vote is not free and fair appears to me to be both necessary and just and not to go beyond what in the circumstances is justified for the purpose of safeguarding the plebiscite.

It is hardly necessary to tell you how unfortunate I feel the difference in our standpoint to be. I will gladly come to New Delhi as you suggest so that any possibility of misunderstanding may be avoided. I shall fly down on Saturday. morning.

(Signed) Owen Dixon United Nations Representative for India and Pakistan