890F.51A/12–644: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Winant)
10223. Please reply as follows to the Foreign Office’s letter of November 2374 regarding a financial adviser for King Ibn Saud:
“In reply to your letter of November 23, 1944, I have been asked to say that the Department of State appreciates the request for an expression of its views regarding the proposal to make available the services of Zahid Hussain, an Indian Sunni Moslem, as a financial adviser to King Ibn Saud.
It is fully understood that nothing in the nature of a financial mission is contemplated and that it is proposed that Zahid Hussain serve as an official of King Ibn Saud, rather than of the British Government. In previous references to a ‘financial mission’ to Saudi Arabia my government has been employing merely for sake of convenience a generic term applicable to proposals for furnishing the King with financial advisers of American or British nationality under a variety of possible circumstances. In this connection it may be recalled that, in the Embassy’s letter of July 7, 1944, to Sir Maurice Peterson, it was stated that the Department had in mind particularly the request for a financial adviser reported to have been made last March by King Ibn Saud. The views expressed in that letter were intended, therefore, to apply to such a proposal as the one to make Zahid Hussain available to the King to act as his own official paid by him.
The Department of State continues to entertain the views expressed in that letter. It therefore is gratified that the British Government is prepared to agree not to proceed any further with the proposal.[”]
Sent to London, repeated to Jidda.75