Italian Fascist War Crimes in Ethiopia - Societa italiana di storia ...

Italian Fascist War Crimes in Ethiopia 131
B rown’s opposition to meeting the Ethiopian Legation’s request was share d
by other Fo reign Office officials. John Twaites noted, on 1 December, that “a l l
the action we need to take for the present is to tell the Ethiopian Legation ve r y
politely that this is not a matter in which we feel we can act as an intermediary. ”
G e o rge Clutton, who had previously sought to dissuade the Ethiopian
G overnment, through its London Legation, from taking any action, noted on the
f o l l owing day: “I tried my best during the summer to dissuade the Ethiopians
f rom this folly and they have now committed it at about the most inappro p r i a t e
moment that they could have chosen.” This was presumably a re f e rence to discussions
on the future of Eritrea, at the United Nations.
Brown, reading the above comments, commented:
I agree entirely . . . The procedure suggested by the Ethiopians for bringing
this request is wrong and I see no objection to our telling them that
we will not act as an intermediary in this matter. We can also impress
upon them the folly of their ways.
He proposed that Britain should, however, act in this matter in concert with
the French and Americans, who, he believed, had also been approached by the
Ethiopian Government in thus matter. 70
This decision was further underscored in a minute of 6 December from the
Foreign Office’s Western Department, which stated: “We propose to tell the
Ethiopian legation very politely that it is not a matter in which we feel that we
can act as an intermediary.” 71
The Fo reign Office view was summarized, on 26 January 1949, by
Pemberton-Pigott. He recalled that his colleagues had “made several attempts to
dissuade the Ethiopians from their war crimes demands,” which, he argued,
“came at a particularly unfortunate time,” since they could “only exacerbate
Italian bitterness over Eritrea,” i.e., the loss of that colony. He nevertheless
added: “the Ethiopians have a clear right under the Treaty to demand the surrender
of war criminals and if they are determined on this course we cannot
prevent them. But we see no reason why we should help them in their approach
to the Italians.” 72
The British position was apparently shared by the French. The latter’s opinion,
a c c o rding to a Fo reign Office minute, of 7 January 1949, was that the question