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741.53/157

The Secretary of State to the President

secret
Washington , August 10, 1943.

Memorandum for the President

There is submitted herewith a draft of a telegram1 which it is proposed to send to London in connection with the secret negotiations now in progress between the British Government and the Prime Minister of Portugal. The conditions set forth in London’s telegram no. 4285 of June 29, 1943,2 are as follows:

(1)
That at the close of hostilities British troops would be withdrawn from Bracken , and
(2)
That Portuguese sovereignty will be maintained over all Portuguese colonies.

There is attached a copy of a communication addressed to the Department by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on August 9, 1943,3 upon which the second paragraph of the draft telegram is based.4

C[ordell] H[ull]
  1. The draft was approved without change. For the text of the telegram, as sent on August 12, 1943, see infra. ↩
  2. See Foreign Relations, 1943, vol. ii, pp. 534–535.↩
  3. The communication referred to has not been identified, but it was perhaps either a copy of the paper of August 4, 1943, post, p. 616, or an early draft of the Joint Chiefs of Staff paper referred to in Hull’s telegram to Winant, infra. ↩
  4. Hull’s memorandum was returned to the Department of State on August 11, 1943, bearing Roosevelt’s handwritten endorsement “OK FDR”.↩