740.00119 Control (Bulgaria)/3–2345: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Harriman) to the Secretary of State
[Received 11:40 a.m.]
870. British Ambassador wrote to Molotov on March 11 and again on March 20 to urge that the Soviet Government give early and favorable consideration to the memorandum on Greek claims in Bulgaria which Eden circulated to the American and Soviet delegations at Yalta.96 In his second letter, Clark Kerr said that Yugoslavia had been allowed by the Control Commission to send representatives to Bulgaria who negotiated direct with the Bulgarian Government on economic matters and were understood to have arranged for substantial deliveries from Bulgaria to Yugoslavia. As Greek representatives had so far not been permitted to enter Bulgaria in connection with reparation deliveries, an unsatisfactory situation had developed in which one of the chief claimants to reparation was receiving highly preferential treatment. The British Government considered that the Control Commission should be instructed at once to see that the deliveries to Greece specified in the armistice agreement and the protocol began without further delay.
Clark Kerr added that the British Government had noted with satisfaction the assurances of the Soviet Government that the recent Moscow negotiations with Bulgarian trade delegation concerned Bulgarian deliveries of strategic war materials to the Soviet Union in exchange for certain industrial supplies, and that these negotiations did not affect the foodstuffs to be delivered to Greece and Yugoslavia.
We have had no reply to the letter which Kennan wrote to Molotov on January 25 with regard to Greek representation in Bulgaria and Bulgarian deliveries to Greece (ReEmb’s 244, January 26, 7 p.m.) or to a letter which I wrote to Dekanosov97 on March 8, referring to [Page 178] Kennan’s communication and requesting information regarding the status of these two related questions.
- Presented at meeting of Foreign Ministers on February 10; Conferences at Malta and Yalta, p. 891.↩
- Vladimir Georgiyevich Dekanozov, Assistant People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union.↩