811.34553B/10–444: Telegram
The Ambassador in Portugal (Norweb) to the Secretary of State
[Received 11:59 p.m.]
3068. ReEmbs 3043, October 2, 7 p.m. As arranged at our last meeting I called on Sampayo this afternoon. I informed him that the letter from Dr. Salazar with its enclosures, which he had then handed to me seemed to me, I was sorry to say, to fail to capture the whole spirit in which the prolonged negotiations in which we were engaged had been conducted. These had centered upon an endeavor to obtain a definition of Portugal’s position vis-à-vis Japan, while the drafts submitted to me were largely concerned with matters of greater or lesser detail, bringing in even, in fact, aspects largely extraneous to the main issue.
I said that I was firmly convinced of the great interest of his country as well as mine in that issue and that I believed the drafts in question might form the basis of an agreement to be reached between us. It was evident, however, that considerable time would be necessary for this to be worked out—at least a month—and meanwhile, the work on the Santa Maria project could not be delayed without threatening the possibility of any such agreement being arrived at. That work, he knew, would take 3 or 4 months to complete so that ample time for the reaching of an agreement remained prior to its completion.
Sampayo at length acknowledged that he saw our point of view in this respect and stated that he would return to Salazar to see what could be done about a reconsideration of the position as regards authorizing over-all construction. He would call me at the earliest possible moment to inform me of the result.