874.00/3–945: Telegram
The United States Representative in Bulgaria (Barnes) to the Secretary of State
[Received March 9—3:18 p.m.]
123. See my 119, March 7, 3 p.m. and preceding telegrams. The national congress of the Fatherland Front opened this morning. [Page 171] Yesterday afternoon I had a conversation with the Minister for Foreign Affairs at the outset of which I said that I had no instructions to seek him out and that I was talking to him merely as an old friend and on a purely personal basis. I then told him that I thought that I had perceived in communication received from Washington since the Yalta Conference a more direct interest on the part of the Department in Bulgarian affairs than had formerly been the case. I told him it was my understanding that the Declaration on Liberated Europe had been made by the three principal Allied Powers in all sincerity and that it was the expectation of Washington that it would be carried out in its entirety in Bulgaria. I also said that I had the impression that there now existed an agreed policy of consultation among the three principal Allies before acting in matters affecting Bulgarian foreign affairs. The Minister said that this was information which he should have even if only on a personal basis before the opening of the FF congress and he thanked me for the interest I had shown in communicating my views to him.
Repeated to Moscow as 50 and AmPolAd as 57.