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Memorandum of Conversation, by the Chief of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs (Murray)
During a call from the French Ambassador this morning I asked whether he had as yet received any instructions from his Government in connection with our draft treaty and convention providing for the termination of American capitulatory rights in the French Zone of the Shereefian Empire. These draft instruments were handed to the French Ambassador more than three months ago.
The Ambassador stated that he had received no word whatsoever and he attributed the delay in the matter to the intense preoccupation of Foreign Office officials with the Italian claims in the Mediterranean [Page 653] and other problems in that area. He added that it was also not unlikely his Government considered that the negotiation of these instruments would take considerable time and that the competent experts of the Foreign Office whose assignment to Washington for purposes of negotiation the Ambassador intended to request could not be spared at the present time. He promised, however, to keep me advised of any developments.