In a recent interesting note published in this journal, F.W.G. Baker reminds us that the resolution which formally excluded political matters from the deliberations of the first Comité Special de l'Année Geophysique Internationale (CSAGI) Antarctic conference, held at the Paris Observatory in July 1955, was proposed by the head of the Chilean delegation, Ambassador J.B. Rossetti, and seconded by his Argentine colleague Ambassador J.A. de Tezanos Pinto. Baker concludes, in part, that ‘the fact that political questions were excluded from the beginning may have had some importance in the creation of the atmosphere that proved so useful when the Antarctic Treaty discussions were later initiated’ (Baker Reference Baker2009: 85). But was politics effectively banished from the conference? Like most of the 29 resolutions adopted, the Chilean motion (resolution 1) was passed unanimously. Two were qualified by reservations from, respectively, the Argentine and Chilean, and the Soviet representatives. Thus far the official record (Laclavère Reference Laclavère1956). But it conceals more than it reveals, as follows.

The president of the conference, G. Laclavère, did indeed open the proceedings by emphasising that they were not to be concerned with financial or political matters, but solely with the technical problems of cooperation between the Antarctic expeditions of the International Geophysical Year (IGY). However, one of his considerations in so doing was that, as he wrote the previous day, he had been having ‘all sorts of difficulties with the Argentinians and Chileans who have put all this business on a political basis’. The Chilean Ambassador, he added, had been phoning him two or three times a day and visiting him three or four times a week (Laclavère Reference Laclavère1955).

Resolution 1, to which Baker draws attention, should be considered in tandem with the Argentine and Chilean reservation to resolution 2, entered on the final day of the conference. The South American ambassadors objected vigorously to the tolerance expressed in resolution 2 towards the co-location of the IGY stations of different national committees. Referring back to resolution 1, their reservation therefore stressed that all decisions of the conference were ‘temporary measures . . . adopted in the interests of scientific development, and . . . do not modify the existing status in the Antarctic regarding the relations of the participating countries’ (Laclavère Reference Laclavère1956: 17). It was not supported by any other delegations, and Laclavère refused to include it in the text of resolution 2. But with its explicit reference to the Antarctic status quo it was a direct expression of Chilean foreign policy on Antarctica, which had been formulated in 1948 and actively promoted in successive dealings with the United States and other Antarctic powers until late in 1953. This was the so-called Escudero proposal, which sought to protect the Chilean territorial claim, and all others, by declaring that they should not be affected by future scientific activities in Antarctica. (The Chilean policy led to not only the Chilean position at CSAGI Antarctic conferences but also Articles IV and VI of the Antarctic Treaty.)

In 1955 Chile had neither an academy of sciences nor an Antarctic institute. Its IGY committee was formed within the ministry of external relations. In that context, Rossetti's report on the Paris meeting explained that he had put forward resolution 1 in order to counteract what he saw as the politically unacceptable trend of Laclavère's opening remarks about keeping politics out of the conference. Rossetti had also tried to support Argentina's political objection to the possible siting of British and American stations in the Weddell Sea, which might be close to either a recently installed Argentine station or another which Argentina planned to put in further south. But, he reported, Laclavère had brushed aside South American objections to co-location with an anodyne resolution (‘declaración Mentholatum’) to the effect that stations should ideally be spread out but could just as well be clustered together. Rossetti commented that ‘behind the scientific academies stand always their governments’ (Acta 1955). (For whatever reason, when the Argentine station was established in January 1955 the British IGY Committee had decided to treat it as having no bearing on their own plans (Antarctic subcommittee 1955b: 1)).

Australian, British and New Zealand (NZ) delegates all reported that, despite the lip service paid at the outset to the idea of keeping the proceedings ‘exclusively scientific’, repeated attempts were made ‘to introduce political considerations’, which then had to be ‘emphatically rejected’ by Laclavère (Deschamps Reference Deschamps1955: 1). The Antarctic subcommittee of the British IGY Committee paid scant attention to resolution 1 (Martin Reference Martin1955a; Antarctic subcommittee 1955a). A nine page report from the New Zealand delegate disregarded it completely, while confirming that ‘[m]any attempts were nevertheless made by the Ambassadors of the Argentine and Chile . . . to score political points over, for example, the question of sovereignty in Graham Land’ (Corner Reference Corner1955: 2). At one point Laclavère grew so exasperated that he made them leave the room (G. Laclavère, personal communication, 12 June 1990). Brian Roberts of the Foreign Office Research Department, who did not attend the conference but coordinated the British assessment of it, reached the same conclusions (Roberts Reference Roberts1955; Anon. 1955: 1; see also Martin Reference Martin1955b). In short the reports from Commonwealth countries confirmed Rossetti's own, above.

The South Americans were not the only delegates frustrated by Laclavère. According to the New Zealand High Commission in London, British officials concluded that they had ‘blundered’ in not sending a diplomat with Antarctic expertise to Paris, and were therefore resolved to send one to Brussels for the second Antarctic conference in September (New Zealand High Commission 1955). As the Australian High Commission explained, ‘Foreign Office gave United Kingdom representative [Sir David Brunt] a political brief covering problems in their own sector which evidently, to their vexation, he did not use, since Chairman ruled out political considerations’ (Deschamps Reference Deschamps1955: 2–3).

In diary entries written in Paris during the conference, Harry Wexler, of the US Weather Bureau, did not consider the Chilean resolution worth mentioning (Wexler Reference Wexler1955). The US IGY committee heard a report from the Paris meeting on 25 July; resolutions 1 and 2 were not discussed (United States 1955: 4–5). The report of the Soviet delegate, Vladimir Belousov, who missed the first two days of the meeting, also made no reference to the Chilean resolution or to any other political interventions (Belousov Reference Belousov1955). One interpretation could be that the ‘non-recognition’ Antarctic policies of the United States and the Soviet Union made it easier for their delegates to achieve their goals at the meeting within the ‘no politics’ framework imposed by Laclavère. This alignment of the meeting with the policies of the superpowers was, arguably, the real bone of contention for the South Americans. It may be significant that Laclavère had convened the conference outside the normal CSAGI channels, at the urgent behest of the American vice president of CSAGI, Lloyd Berkner. This made it possible not to invite the Russians. However Laclavère sent them a broad hint, without informing Berkner, and they invited themselves (Bulkeley Reference Bulkeley2008).

Baker has a valid point because, when nothing better can be obtained, lip service is sometimes worth having in international relations. But from the accounts of participants, above, a more rounded picture can be drawn of the political conflicts that buffeted the conference. The author has argued that, taken together, the Chilean/Argentine resolution of 6 July and reservation of 10 July 1955 were tantamount to a, minor and unsuccessful, political démarche. And politics continued to dog the CSAGI Antarctic conferences. At Paris in July 1956, for example, the Argentine delegate Admiral R.N.M. Panzarini protested so strongly against an Australian map, being used by Father P. LeJay of France to illustrate a gravimetric project, that Laclavère was obliged to tear it down (Bourchier Reference Bourchier1956). However, to focus on this somewhat cosmetic aspect of the first CSAGI Antarctic conference would be to miss the true significance of the event. It was the first time that politically instructed, or guided, or at the very least, trusted representatives from all seven countries with Antarctic territorial claims, with others from the United States and the Soviet Union (plus observers from Belgium and West Germany), ever sat down in the same room to discuss any aspect of the management of the Antarctic continent itself, and not just whaling. Whether things went smoothly or not, surely that is sufficient historical landmark.