File No. 2491/40.
The Costa Rican Minister on Special Mission to the Secretary of State.
Washington, November 21, 1908.
Mr. Secretary: On various occasions I have had the honor of explaining to your excellency the state of the boundary question pending between the Republics of Costa Rica and Panama and of soliciting the mediation and impartial good offices of your excellency’s Government in order to procure a satisfactory solution of the present situation, which unfortunately constitutes a cause of unrest in both countries to the impairment of their reciprocal interests and of the feeling of good will and amity which has always united the Costa Ricans and the Panamans.
[Page 775]On the 19th of December last the Department of State, in answering my note of the 9th of that month, saw fit to accede to my request in terms that evoked the gratitude of my Government, which for a moment contemplated the immediate realization of the fervent desire to see its only pending controversy of an international character closed and settled forever. But the presidential campaign which began shortly afterwards in Panama forestalled the opening of any negotiations whatever.
It is the belief of my Government that the present would perhaps be a propitious time for entering into negotiations with Panama through the medium of the legation of that Republic in Washington, and with the just and impartial mediation of your excellency’s Government, which therefore Costa Rica now solicits anew, invoking, besides other considerations, the repeated proofs of the sincere and cordial friendship of the United States toward the sister Republics of Costa Rica and Panama, and most especially the marked interest which your excellency evinces in everything that tends to the just and honorable settlement of any differences between the countries of the American Continent.
In most respectfully making the foregoing request in conformity with special instructions from my Government, I avail myself, etc.