611.60F31/568: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Minister in Czechoslovakia (Carr)
6. Your letter of January 4 to Culbertson.6 We regret that we have not been able to keep you currently informed in greater detail as to the progress of the trade agreement negotiations. We have tried to keep you informed in broad outline but it would be almost impossible to give a day by day account of developments.
The position which the Czech delegation has taken to the effect that the demands which we have presented represent a change from the basis previously set forth is to our mind quite inaccurate. We feel we made it quite clear to the Czech Legation that the lists which we gave them in July and August did not represent the final list of commodities, since we could not have given them such a final list until all American interests had had an opportunity to present their views. Even so, there are only a half dozen items upon which we have requested action which were not covered in the two lists submitted to the Czechs, and not one of these additional items has caused any difficulties to date.
At the outset of our negotiations we presented the Czech delegation with a complete draft agreement such as we would like to see signed. We told them that we considered Schedule I (our request list) as balancing the concessions which we were offering. We have not yet discussed Schedule II at any time. With the exception of Article 8 (the quota provision) we are in substantial agreement in respect of the general provisions. All of our other meetings have been devoted to a discussion of Schedule I. The original Czech offers in large part failed to meet our requests. On restudy we found it possible to modify our requests on certain important items but not to a point offered by the Czechs. We have explained in detail why we consider the offers as being unsatisfactory. The Czechs are at present again presenting their offers which we understand will represent the maximum offers authorized by the Czech Government. So far the present offers represent practically no improvement over the offers originally made to us. As soon as we have received all the Czech offers we will study them as a whole with a view to determining whether they could in any circumstances be accepted and if so what curtailment of our own offers would be necessary.
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