740.00119 Council/3–546: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Assistant Secretary of State ( Dunn ), at London

top secret

1998. Top Secret for Dunn from the Secretary. I intend after speaking with Halifax43 and giving him the opportunity to inform [Page 23] Bevin of our plans to send telegrams substantially as follows to Bevin, Molotov and Bidault:

“I should like to suggest a meeting at Paris beginning April 15 of the Council of Foreign Ministers made up of the Foreign Ministers of the states which are concerned with the preparation of the peace treaties which it was agreed at the Moscow Conference should be submitted to a peace conference to be convened at Paris not later than May 1. I hope you will agree with me that such a meeting is essential to enable us to carry out the decision of the Moscow Conference with respect to the peace conference.

“I have been much distressed at the slow progress made by our deputies. I hope that each of us may instruct our deputies to press forward their work on the drafts with utmost speed reserving major matters on which they cannot agree for resolution by the Foreign Ministers at the Paris meeting beginning April 15. I am sending similar messages to Bevin and Bidault.”

Please cable if you have any suggestions.44

Byrnes
  1. Lord Halifax, British Ambassador in the United States until May 1946.
  2. In telegram 2689, March 7, 1946, from London, Assistant Secretary Dunn replied as follows:

    “I think the plan suggested in your 1998, March 5. 6 p.m. just received this morning is an excellent one and is the only method we can see here to get us out of the present doldrums and have anything like basic drafts ready for a peace conference. We have spent most of this week reviewing items on which no progress had been made at former sessions. In matters such as colonies, reparations, the Dodecanese, and French and Austrian frontiers we have not only made no further progress but my own impression is that the Soviet delay is just plain stalling.

    If you reach agreement on meeting of FoMin for April 15 we could then press forward on such parts of the drafts as we can. reserving major matters still at issue for discussion at your Paris April meeting.” (740.00119 Council/3–746)