611.6531/173
Memorandum by the Chief of the Division of Western European Affairs (Moffat)
At the instance of Mr. Sayre5 the Italian Ambassador6 called this morning at twelve o’clock. Mr. Grady7 and Mr. Moffat were present.
Mr. Sayre reviewed briefly the two points of view as set forth in our recent exchange of notes and pointed out that in our opinion the best thing to do was for the two Governments to begin negotiations on the understanding that neither side was committed to the acceptance of the beliefs and theories advanced by the other.
Mr. Sayre handed Mr. Rosso an aide-mémoire8 which the latter read out loud in his presence. Mr. Rosso said that this represented a fair and sympathetic approach to the problem and that he would recommend to his Government that we do not spend further time discussing trade theories but proceed from abstractions to concrete negotiations. He again reiterated that the main purpose of the Italian aide-mémoire was to prevent our feeling at a later date, in the event that negotiations should not be proceeding smoothly, that Italy had not played fair with us at the beginning.
After some talk it was agreed that, subject to the approval of the Italian Foreign Office, public announcement of intent to negotiate a trade agreement would be made on Wednesday, January 16;9 that the last day for the presentation of written briefs for the public hearings would be set at March 4, and the last date for oral arguments would be set at March 11. Following these public hearings, we would complete our list of desiderata which would be passed by the Trade Agreements Committee and we would undertake to exchange this desiderata between May 1 and May 8. Ambassador Rosso hoped to give us a definite answer before the end of the week. He did not know as yet whether his Government would send over an expert to negotiate or would confide the task to his Commercial Counselor.