800.51W89 Yugoslavia/160
Memorandum by the Chief of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs (Murray)
The Yugoslav Minister called on me Saturday to say that he thought the Department had made a mistake in sending him its note of November 28 concerning the amounts due from the Yugoslav Government on its war debt to the American Government, since no new payment would fall due on December 15th.
I replied that no error had been made: that as I understood it, since payments would fall due on December 15 from a number of countries and notices were accordingly being sent to them, the Treasury considered it an appropriate time to send the Yugoslav Government also a reminder of the amounts overdue from it. The Minister observed that notices of these amounts had been presented when they fell due on June 15, 1932, and June 15, 1933, and that his Government had explained in detail why it could not pay them; he considered that those payments should therefore be considered as disposed of and that no further notice ought to be sent him until the next instalment falls due on June 15, 1934. In answer to this I pointed out that the payments in question could not be considered as “disposed of”, so long as they remained unpaid, except by mutual agreement.
The Minister then turned to the note and said he thought the phrasing “including the amounts due on June 15, 1932 and June 15, 1933”, in the first paragraph, misleading, as it implied that there were other payments due whereas actually there are none. I said that if he wished I would look into the possibility of changing the word “including” to read “namely”. He said he would like to think it over.