740.0011 E.W./3–1645: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Winant)29
2054. The British Embassy has handed the Department a memorandum concerning the interpretation of the Yalta Declaration on liberated Europe which states that even before the situation in Rumania led the U.K. government to support the U.S. government’s invocation of the Three Power Declaration on Liberated Territories, the Foreign Office had been considering the general implications of the Declaration [Page 516] and, without prejudice to what may come out of the Rumanian situation, feels it important that the U.K. and U.S. governments reach a clear idea of and agreement upon the general interpretation to be placed by them on the Declaration. The memorandum then states that in view of the very general terms in which the Declaration was drafted, the Foreign Office feels that two different interpretations can be placed on it, namely (1) that when all three governments jointly consider it necessary to set up some special machinery they would proceed to do so, or (2) that no unilateral action by any one of the signatory governments is permissible, as regards matters mentioned in the Declaration, in any liberated state or former Axis satellite in Europe.
For your information and guidance, the Department’s informal reply to the British Embassy was as follows:
“In opening paragraph of the declaration the three powers undertake an unconditional obligation to concert their policies in the following terms:
‘They jointly declare their mutual agreement to concert during the temporary period of instability in the liberated Europe the policies of their three governments in assisting the peoples liberated from the domination of Nazi Germany and the peoples of the former Axis satellite states of Europe to solve by democratic means their pressing political and economic problems.’
This obligation while unconditional is general in character.
The specific operative sections of the declaration are governed by the paragraph reading:
‘When, in the opinion of the three governments, conditions in any European liberated state or any former Axis satellite state in Europe make such action necessary, they win immediately consult together on the measures necessary to discharge the joint responsibilities set forth in this declaration.’
The only reasonable interpretation of this language is that all three governments must agree as a prerequisite to setting the operative sections of the declaration in motion.”
- Repeated to Moscow as Department’s No. 621.↩