711.672/226: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the High Commissioner at Constantinople ( Bristol )
224. The Department is pleased to learn from your telegram 318 of December 6 that satisfactory progress is being made in claims negotiations. Although doubtless you appreciate the importance of arriving at an agreement as soon as possible, your attention is particularly invited to the following considerations:
- 1.
- The Department would prefer to submit the treaty to the Senate early in the present session rather than to try late in the spring to secure its ratification when the likelihood of prompt action might be [Page 1185] lessened by the possibility of early adjournment and the pressure of business.
- 2.
- It is important that we should be able to regularize our relations with Turkey when the Allies do the same, and we have no reason to doubt that in France, Great Britain, and Italy the Allied treaty with Turkey will soon be sent to the Parliaments.
- 3.
- Attacks in the Senate against the treaty, even before its formal submission for ratification, might be caused by delay in arriving at a claims agreement.
- 4.
- It might also be hard to explain delay in sending the treaty to the Senate for ratification without giving detailed information about the present negotiations and telling of the reluctance of the Turks to arrive at any reasonable settlement on this important subject.
Report any information available as to the plans of the Turks for submitting the treaty to their National Assembly. Is there any likelihood that the Assembly will adjourn in the immediate future? Telegraph date for signature by the Turks of the English and Turkish texts.
The Department has noted with interest, in connection with the general subject of claims arbitration, the statement which Ismet Pasha made during the first phase of the Lausanne Conference, that Turkey had resorted to arbitration to settle the dispute with the Soviet Government, regarding the payment of Soviet claims, and adding that, doubtless, for nations to resort to arbitration to settle disputes between them is not at all incompatible with their sovereign rights. See British publication: Turkey No. 1 (1923), Cmd. 1814, p. 513.