811.001 Truman, H.S./7–945
King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia to President Truman 56
Your Excellency: We have received with great pleasure Your Excellency’s answer57 to the message58 we had sent you by our son Amir Faisal. What pleased us most in that answer was Your Excellency’s promise that an opportunity would offer itself for our meeting together in the near future. Thus we shall hope to continue the friendship [Page 927] we had established, as a result of our meeting with your predecessor, into a new friendship with Your Excellency. We are certainly looking forward to that opportunity with eager anticipation.
As I write my answer to your message and generous promise, I cannot but refer to the friendship that bound us with the late President Roosevelt and with the American people and the friendship that is being renewed with Your Excellency. It is on the basis of what we know of Your Excellency’s and your people’s interest in the welfare of our country and our people that we feel encouraged to approach Your Excellency with regard to a matter that is of extreme importance to our country in the present circumstances.
I am certain that His Excellency the United States Minister has informed Your Excellency and other authorities concerned about the present situation in our country. The aid that the United States Government has been extending to us in accordance with the recommendations of the late President Roosevelt, together with the aid that we have been receiving from the British Government, helped us in steering our country through a most difficult crisis, which has been caused by the present war situation. At the same time I feel certain that, like your predecessor, you will be concerned about the welfare of our country, so that it will be able to pass safely through the present crisis.
We have learned from Colonel Eddy, United States Minister, that the amount of supplies and the amount of currency in the form of Arabian rials assigned to our country for the second half of this year on the basis of lend-lease have not been finally approved due to a delay in presenting the case to the American Congress. What I know of Your Excellency’s and your people’s concern for the welfare of my friendly country gives me the assurance that this matter will receive Your Excellency’s immediate attention, and that you will extend a helping hand to my country, which is threatened by the war crisis and which has been greatly injured by the locust scourge.
We are happy to send Your Excellency our most sincere greetings and wishes.
Your sincere friend
- Copy of translation from the Arabic transmitted by the Legation in Saudi Arabia in despatch 151, July 9; received July 20.↩
- Dated June 1, not printed.↩
- To President Roosevelt, March 28, 1945, not printed. The letter was transmitted to the Secretary of State by the Amir Faisal “for presentation to President Truman instead of to the late President.” The Amir, second son of King Ibn Saud, came to the United States as Chairman of the Saudi Arabian delegation to the United Nations Conference on International Organization, which met at San Francisco from April 25 to June 26, 1945. The Amir visited Washington July 31–August 1, 1945, for discussions with Departmental officers. For documentation on this subject, see pp. 1000 ff.↩