462.00 R 294/279: Telegram
The Chargé in France (Whitehouse) to the Secretary of State
409. I was informed this morning by a member of the British Embassy that he had received new instructions and that it was his present understanding that the whole matter had been complicated [Page 188] anew by our having presented a claim for a share in the Bulgarian reparation payment made recently.31 I said that I was unaware that any such action had been taken, but if it had I did not see that the situation had been made more difficult. My informant replied that the whole question of the interpretation of the agreement was necessarily involved in such a claim on our part; it was his contention that a decision of the Conference of Ambassadors notifying the agreement to the Reparation Commission was a decision approving the agreement; he is not willing to concur in such a decision until the question of interpretation has been settled so he is able to know precisely the scope of the agreement that he is to approve.
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I inquired what for him would constitute a satisfactory settlement of the matter at issue, and he made it clear that his criterion was Sir John Bradbury’s satisfaction.
He was under the impression that our position on the Bulgarian payment had been taken by Logan either at meetings of the Reparation Commission or of the commission’s subcommittees. He is evidently in error, for Logan is still without instructions.
Logan advises me that it is possible Bulgarian payments came to the commission’s attention through draft reports of the Finance Service, but that he had neither discussed nor referred to the position of the Government of the United States on interpretation of the agreement with anyone. …
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