Armament > Conference for the control of the international trade in arms, munitions and implements of war

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19. Draft Report.
The draft report was adopted, subject to a few slight changes of wording in the English text.
20. Discussion of the British Amendments.
The Commission proceeded to discuss the amendments by the British delegation (Document
15, Appendix III, page 144).
General Benitez (Spain) asked whether the British delegation maintained its draft memoran¬
dum (Document 15, Appendix IV, page 147).
The Chairman replied that this draft was maintained but that he thought it would be better
to discuss the provisional draft of the Convention first (Document 12, page 133)-
General Dumesnil (France) expressed the opinion that the Permanent Advisory Commission
should only give its advice on the technical points of this provisional draft and not on the political
or legal points.
The French delegation expressed no opinion on the British amendments but considered that
it was not for the Permanent Advisory Commission to propose other than technical amendments
to the Temporary Mixed Commission.
General de Marinis (Italy) said he had carefully examined the British amendments, and he
paid a tribute to the thorough and comprehensive work of the British delegation. He had no
doubt that the Temporary Mixed Commission would take these amendments into consideration
if Colonel Lowe laid them before it. Considered as a whole, the amendments could be divided
under three heads :
(1) The licences and the obligations of the High Contracting Parties in connection with
the Central International Office; this question was essentially of a political character; the question
of the type of licence to be used and of the method of checking them was an economic one,
(2) “The question of the prohibited areas was of an exclusively political nature, so much so
that the Temporary Mixed Commission, although comprising a number of political members,
had decided to refer the question to the Council;
(3) The question of the number and specification of the Governments whose adhesion was
consideied indispensable before the Convention could be put into force was also purely political.
The Italian delegation proposed that the Permanent Advisory Commission should read
through the draft, stopping to consider the technical points.
The Chairman proposed that the Commission should follow the same procedure as that
employed in the case of the Treaty of Mutual Assistance and read the Convention paragraph by
paragraph, picking out the technical points and paying no attention to the others.
This proposal was adopted.
Admiral de Souza e Silva (Brazil) said that the question was not so simple. The Permanent
Advisory Commission had been entrusted with the task of settling the technical conditions of
applying a convention. The British delegation had recognised that general rules could not be
laid down and that any attempt at drawing up a convention which did not allow for individual
cases would have little prospect of being accepted by all the States. It was easy enough to agree
on broad principles, but the difficulty was to agree on their application, which raised all kinds
of technical problems. In the problems presented by the control of the traffic, and particularly
in the question of licences, the technical and political aspects were closely allied. Thus, Articles
11 to 22, which the Commission had pronounced technical and which the Naval Sub-Commission
had examined, certainly had a political aspect.
The Chairman replied that the question of distinguishing between the technical aspect and
the political aspect was a problem with which the Permanent Advisory Commission was always
being faced and which it had hitherto always solved, and he was confident that it would be solved
again in this instance. He proposed that the British amendments should be read, together with
any which might be submitted by other delegations, as each article was read.
21. Preamble.
General Benitez (Spain) considered that the existing text ought in general to be changed
as little as possible, since there was an official representative of the United States of America
both on the Temporary Mixed Commission and on the First Sub-Commission. The existing text
was probably that most likely to be accepted by the United States.
The British Delegation proposed that the preamble should not be discussed, as it had
already been referred to the Legal Section.
This proposal was adopted.