740.00119 Control (Austria)/5–745: Telegram
The Chargé in the Soviet Union (Kennan) to the Secretary of State
[Received May 7—5:40 p.m.]
1490. ReDeptel 995, May 3, noon, 425 to Caserta for Erhardt. In reply to my letter incorporating the request that instructions be issued to Marshal Tolbukhin that Allied representatives be permitted to fly to Vienna without further delay, I have now received a letter from Vyshinski dated May 6, stating that the Soviet Government does not object as it has not objected previously to our representatives proceeding to Vienna to participate in the control machinery. However, continues Vyshinski, in giving such agreement the Soviet Government was confident that by the time the representatives arrived the necessary agreement would have been reached on the question of zones of occupation and the zones themselves would have been delimited by the EAC. Unfortunately the zones have not yet been delimited. The proposal to transfer the question of zones of occupation for consideration in Vienna is inacceptable in the opinion of the Soviet Government [Page 117] since questions of this nature, as was agreed by the leaders of the three states,29 are entirely within the competence of the EAC.
Vyshinski continues that the statement in my letter to the effect that the conversations in the EAC regarding zones of occupation in Vienna would not be successfully concluded until our representatives arrived in Vienna was unconvincing. It was sufficient to point out, he concluded, that the zones of occupation in Germany and Berlin were set up by the EAC before Allied troops entered German territory.
Sent to Department as 1490, repeated to Caserta for Erhardt as 89 and to London for EAC as 195.
- For text of the terms of reference of the European Advisory Commission as agreed upon at the Moscow Conference on November 1, 1943, see Foreign Relations, 1943, vol. i, p. 756 ↩