837.51 Public Works Debt/125: Telegram
The Acting Secretary of State to the Chargé in Cuba ( Beaulac )
74. Your 106, October 5, 8 p.m. The statement made by you to the Cuban Secretary of State as reported in the second paragraph of your telegram under acknowledgment is an entirely accurate presentation of the position consistently taken by this Government in the matter.
It is hardly necessary for me to add that no such statements have been made by me, either to General Montalvo or to the Cuban Ambassador, as those alleged by the Cuban Secretary of State in your conversation with him yesterday. The point of view I have expressed to the Cuban Ambassador and to the other Cuban officials with whom I have talked during the past year has been that the relationship between Cuba and the United States was necessarily a reciprocal relationship; that the United States was prepared and disposed to cooperate in every possible way along economic and commercial lines with the Cuban Government to the advantage of both nations; but that such policy as this could not be merely one-sided. I have stated that it was inconceivable that public opinion in the United States would support this Government in the policy which it has been carrying out toward Cuba unless Cuba at the same time met her just and fair obligations to nationals of the United States. There has never been any indication by me of “additional economic benefits” as a quid pro quo for an adjustment on the part of Cuba with its bondholders. I have, on the contrary, limited myself to pointing out that it was in Cuba’s own interest to rehabilitate her national credit and to make possible a continuation of a close and friendly reciprocal economic policy between the two countries by paying her just debts. The attitude invariably taken by the Department has been that this Government desired equal treatment for all of the creditor groups and not preferential treatment for one particular group.
I am seeing the Cuban Ambassador and General Montalvo today and shall request them to correct immediately any misinterpretation which has been given to any conversations I may have had with them in the past.