Office of the Historian

860h.01/2–2645: Telegram

The Acting Secretary of State to the Ambassador to the Yugoslav Government in Exile (Patterson), at London

Washington, February 26, 1945—5 p.m.

Yugos 26. The Department yesterday handed the following text to the Yugoslav Chargé:90

“In the Crimea Declaration of February 11,91 President Roosevelt, Marshal Stalin and Prime Minister Churchill agreed to recommend to Marshal Tito and to Dr. Subasic that the agreement between them should be put into effect immediately, and that a new Government should be formed on the basis of that agreement. At the same time there was published to the world a declaration on Liberated Europe,92 in which the President, Marshal Stalin and Prime Minister Churchill declared their mutual agreement to concert the policies of their three Governments to assist liberated peoples to solve by democratic means their pressing political and economic problems. Among the situations in which this assistance would be applicable would be cases where in the judgment of the principal Allies the conditions within a liberated state require that interim governmental authorities be formed which would be broadly representative of all democratic elements in the population and pledged to the earliest possible establishment through free elections of Governments responsible to the will of the people.

Accordingly the United States Government would like to see Dr. Subasic and Marshal Tito reach an early agreement, in accordance with these principles and in a spirit of mutual understanding, in the negotiations now taking place at Belgrade.”

Repeated to Moscow and Caserta.

Grew
  1. Ivan Franges.↩
  2. See section VII of the Report of the Crimea Conference, Conferences at Malta and Yalta, p. 974.↩
  3. Section V, ibid., p. 971.↩