868.00/12–2444: Telegram
The Ambassador in Greece (MacVeagh) to the Secretary of State
[Received December 27—11:25 a.m.]
181. I am reliably informed that the King has replied to his Ministers merely thanking them for their advice and saying that he is in touch with the British Government (see my 175, December 22, noon62). In addition the ELAS has replied to Scobie in a memo which according to the British Ambassador permits of further discussion though it rejects the idea of any mediation by an outsider such as Field Marshal Alexander and insists that there should be a government set up here “of a really free and independent state”. Such a government it says should undertake: (1) the removal of collaborationists from the state machinery; (2) punishment of traitors; (3) formation of a national army—“all volunteer forces including the Mountain Brigade and the Sacred Company being disbanded”; and (4) the guidance of the country toward general elections. Meanwhile the “Mountain Brigade and the Greek units which have been brought recently from the Middle East or elsewhere” should be withdrawn to a distance from Athens as for instance to Syra or others of the Cyclades; gendarmerie must be disarmed and its personnel sent home until the whole corps is purged; and further light must be shed on the disposition to be made of the personnel in the former security battalions. Finally the memo states that “on general agreement being reached the ELAS will remove its forces from Athens and the Piraeus and its supporters in those cities will lay down their arms simultaneously with the supporters of the opposite party”. “We propose that the only real logical [the only realisable] method will be for this to be undertaken by the Greek Government of mutual confidence which will be formed. It is in any case a matter of principle that the surrender of arms by Greek citizens can be made only to a Greek Government.”
A copy of this memorandum, which is prefaced by an argumentative paragraph on the responsibility for the present “blood-stained intervention of the British forces”, is being forwarded to the Department by airmail.63 Mr. Papandreou regards the ELAS reply as “unacceptable” (its acceptance obviously involving the setting up of another government than his), but Mr. Leeper feels that it is now more than ever clear that the appointment of a regent (preferably the [Page 167] Archbishop) is essential to obtaining a solution and last night sent an urgent telegram to London to this effect.
Sent Department as 181, repeated Caserta as 24.