723.2515/1974: Telegram
The Ambassador in Peru (Poindexter) to the Secretary of State
[Received March 3—10:37 a.m.]
18. I have just [seen] the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the President and delivered to each of them your memorandum11 in writing. Shortly before this I had received a message from the President requesting me to call at the palace, which I did. The President handed me a copy of a letter just received by the Minister for Foreign Affairs from the Minister of Peru in Montevideo, in which the Peruvian Minister confirmed his telegram in which he explained the circumstances of the visit of the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Argentina to Montevideo and stated that at that time Mr. Gallardo proposed to the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Uruguay that the President of Uruguay should offer his mediation in the question of Tacna and Arica and proposed certain conditions for the division of the provinces. The President of Peru apparently looked upon this alleged offer of the Argentine Minister, which was refused by the Uruguayan Government, as having been prompted by Chile. The President then referred to your memorandum offering the good offices of the United States and his reply thereto. He stated that he had been giving the matter considerable thought and that he had great reluctance in rejecting any proposition by the United States and reiterated his willingness to accept any settlement which might be made by the United States, provided the United States would be a party to the agreement; and he suggested that if the United States did not desire to become a party to such an agreement that the United States enter into an alliance with Peru and cited the case of Great Britain and Portugal as an example of such an arrangement, or that in some such way the effect of a guarantee of the United States be indirectly accomplished. I stated to the President that you had been very explicit in the rejection of anything of this character and that I was thoroughly satisfied that it could not be considered but at his request would cable to you what he had said. …
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- See telegram No. 18, Mar. 2, 2 p.m., to the Ambassador in Peru, supra.↩