Office of the Historian

800.85/867: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Colombia (Lane)

Washington, June 2, 1943—9 p.m.

703. Your A–402, May 18, 1943, and 873, May 19.93 Please advise the Minister of Hacienda and other appropriate officials of the information given below. If these changes now make conditions and terms of bill of sale satisfactory, you are requested to present to the Foreign Office a note containing the following text:

“My Government agrees to the elimination in clause 3 of the contract of the phrase ‘que el precio de compra (U. S. $1,500,000) debe ser retenido por el vendedor o el Gobierno de Colombia para el pago de dichos reclamos’94 as my Government is confident that the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros and the Colombian Government will see that the obligations under the contract for the payment of claims from the purchase proceeds will be observed.

“The change suggested concerning the manner of payment of the purchase price is agreed to.

“My Government considers it necessary to eliminate from the contract the proposed provision concerning arbitration, since it cannot agree that the arbitration should necessarily be under Colombian law. If at any time it should be found necessary to resort to arbitration, an arrangement therefor could then be agreed upon.

“Upon the receipt of a note from the Foreign Office expressing approval of the contract with the changes suggested above, I (or in my absence, the Chargé d’Affaires ad interim) am authorized to sign it.”

Please send by air mail two certified copies of contract when signed.

Hull
  1. Neither printed.↩
  2. “That the purchase price (U. S. $1,500,000) is to be retained by the seller or the Government of Colombia for the payment of said claims.”↩