875.01/1–2045: Telegram
The Acting Secretary of State to Mr. Alexander C. Kirk, Political Adviser on the Staff of the Supreme Allied Commander, Mediterranean Theater
82. Reurtel 237 January 20.42 While the Department does not intend to make formal reply to the Albanian request for recognition, [Page 11] you are authorized to indicate informally to Kadri Hoxha that the request for recognition which was addressed to the President by the Enver Hoxha regime has been received in Washington. You should say that this Government is not able to accord official recognition to any government in Albania at the present time as it will be necessary before taking such formal step for us to be more fully informed than at present regarding the situation in Albania. It may be useful for you to recall to Hoxha that this procedure is in accordance with the general policy of the United States as set forth in the President’s recent message to Congress.43 You should have in mind for your guidance in this conversation the passage in which the President said: “During the interim period, until conditions permit a genuine expression of the people’s will, we and our Allies have a duty, which we cannot ignore, to use our influence to the end that no temporary or provisional authorities in the liberated countries block the eventual exercise of the people’s right freely to choose the government and institutions under which, as free men, they are to live”.
You should then say that your Government may wish at an early date to send representatives into Albania on an entirely informal basis for the purpose of reporting to this Government on conditions in the country and for the performance of such informal functions as may be necessary in this interim period. We suppose that the authorities at Tirana would accord to them the courtesies and help necessary for these functions.
For your own information (Reurtel 295 January 2544) the Department does not want to send Jacobs to Albania until it is assured that conditions there and the attitude of the governing authorities are appropriate to the presence in Tirana of an official American representative. Not only do we wish to avoid any implication of immediate or early recognition which would be likely to attend Jacobs’ arrival in Albania at this stage, but we expect the time and manner of the establishment of permanent diplomatic representatives there to be determined by consultation and agreement among the principal Allied Governments. We accordingly now intend, if Hoxha should agree to the arrangement outlined in the foregoing paragraph, to name a Foreign Service Officer who would proceed to Albania at a very early date for this preliminary survey. We would in this event endeavor to arrange for this officer to be accompanied by Fultz, Hoffmann45 [Page 12] and Stevens,46 who will remain as part of our permanent staff at Tirana.
Sent to Caserta; repeated to Cairo47 for Jacobs.
- See footnote 9, p. 2.↩
- For text of President Roosevelt’s Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union, January 6, 1945, see Department of State Bulletin, January 7, 1945, p. 22; or The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1944–45 volume, Victory and the Threshold of Peace, compiled by Samuel I. Rosenman (New York, Harper amp; Brothers, 1950), p. 483.↩
- Not printed.↩
- Erich William August Hoffmann, Vice Consul in Naples; in April designated Special Assistant in the informal American mission to Albania.↩
- Anthony Stevens, in April designated a clerk in the American Foreign Service and assigned to the informal American mission in Albania.↩
- As telegram 271.↩