740.00119 Council/12–645: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in the United Kingdom( Winant )
10582. Personal for Winant. Please convey following message to Bevin:56
“We plan to release the following statement to the press Friday, December 7, 10 a.m., Washington time:
‘A meeting of the Foreign Secretaries of Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States has been arranged to take place in Moscow December 15. This meeting has been called in accordance with the decision taken at the Yalta Conference providing for quarterly conferences of the Three Foreign Secretaries. The meeting will provide an opportunity for the British and American Governments to exchange views with the Soviet Government on the subject of the control of atomic energy. It will also provide opportunity for informal and exploratory discussion of other matters of current interest and concern to the three countries.’
“We hope that a simultaneous release substantially along these lines may be made at London and Moscow. We suggest the foregoing form of release to avoid any undue expectations in advance as to the results of the conference, although it is not our intention to confine the discussions to atomic energy but to include the other points we have tentatively proposed for inclusion in the agenda. While we hope differences in the form of release in the three capitals will not be so great as to provoke public discussion, the exact form of the release may be so shaped by each government as to meet its particular problems.
“In order to meet your desire to omit matters of concern to the French Government from the agenda we are ready to agree that questions affecting Germany should not be discussed. We think it important, however, that there should be exploratory conversations on the resumption of the work of the Council of Foreign Ministers, but no definite decision should be made without communication with France and China. We are communicating our proposed agenda as a purely American proposal to Molotov with the statement that it is of course understood that the other two Governments propose their own suggested lists of items with the final agenda to be drawn up by mutual agreement when the three Foreign Secretaries meet in Moscow.”
- An identical message for Molotov, with the exception of the final paragraph, which was omitted, was sent to Moscow in telegram 2460, December 6, 3 p.m. The message was communicated to Molotov by Ambassador Harriman in a letter dated December 7, and Molotov replied in a letter of the same date which agreed that identical statements should be released in the three capitals but proposed that the last two sentences in the proposed American statement be combined. For text of the revised statement as ultimately released to the press at 8 p.m., December 7, see Department of State Bulletin, December 9, 1945, p. 935.↩