30

The reference to " appointed day " is, of course, a reference to the day on which the mandate was to terminate —namely, at twelve midnight (Jerusalem time) on 14th May, 1948. Thus it was now possible, in the view of the United Kingdom Government, for the United Nations to appoint a Municipal Commissioner after the date of the termination of the mandate, and the powers conferred on this Commissioner were very broad. Not only would he be able to take action to provide for the maintenance of the municipal services, but he would also have the power to enforce law and order and to delegate all or any powers to any bodies or persons. Many members of the sub-committee entertained grave doubts as to the validity of the legal basis upon which the Commissioner's power would rest after the termination of the mandate, and the subcommittee gave its attention to a Franco-American proposal (Document A/C/l/SC/10/1) calling for the establishment of a special temporary Government for Jerusalem based largely on the provisions of Chapter XII of the Charter. This regime would automatically come to an end on 31st December, 1949, failing a contrary decision by the General Assembly. The French representative, M. Garreau, stated that although the joint proposal was based on Chapter XII it did not constitute a trusteeship agreement, but rather a provisional and special international regime such as had been adopted as a solution by the General Assembly on 29th November, 1947. This view was hardly in agreement with the attitude of the co-author of the proposal as was made quite clear at a later stage in the debate by the United States representative who asserted that the proposal was in effect a trusteeship agreement and would need to be approved by the Assembly before the expiration of the mandate. The representative of Iraq (Mr. Khalidy) then claimed that since the plan was a disguised trusteeship agreement it was quite illegal since it had not been proposed by the mandatory Power nor had it received the agreement of the " States directly concerned," which, in his view, included all the Arab States. It was pointed out in reply that, in the negotiation of the trusteeship agreements already approved by the General Assembly, the States directly concerned had never been determined. The New Zealand delegation took the view that since the inhabitants of Jerusalem were capable of governing themselves the placing of the city under trusteeship would not be appropriate, yet because of the fact that it had proved impossible to put into effect the Statute for Jerusalem, and no other alternative had a chance of securing much support, in the last resort we would support the United States' ad hoc trusteeship plan as an urgent measure of an entirely temporary character.