611.6531/293
Memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of State (Sayre)
The Italian Ambassador called at my request so that I could give him a reply to the question which he asked me in our interview on November first.32 I met him in Mr. Dunn’s33 office. I explained to the Ambassador that my associates in the Department and I had given careful consideration to the suggestion of his Government in regard to sending experts to Washington to discuss some of the preliminary questions with respect to the negotiation of a trade agreement. I told the Ambassador that, in view of all the circumstances and of the existing feeling in this country,34 I feared that the sending of experts by his Government to Washington in connection with a trade agreement would be widely misunderstood and interpreted as the entering into of intensive negotiations. I added that if such a misunderstanding should arise it would place both our Governments in a most embarrassing position if we could not show that such a visit had resulted in definite fruits in the form of a trade agreement or otherwise. For all these reasons I concluded it would seem unwise to our Government for the Italian Government to send experts at this time. I added that we should be only too happy to answer any questions which the Ambassador might like to bring to our attention or to clarify any points which might arise in his mind. I said that I could well understand the pressure under which his Government was working at this time and that I saw no reason to hurry matters along.
The Ambassador said that he well understood our viewpoint and that he had already anticipated it in the cable which he had sent to his Government concerning our conversation of November first. He said that he would inform his Government as to our answer.
- Memorandum of conversation not printed.↩
- James Clement Dunn, Chief of the Division of Western European Affairs.↩
- See vol. i, pp. 594 ff.↩