740.00119 Council/3–846: Telegram

The Assistant Secretary of State ( Dunn ) to the Secretary of State

secret

2746. For the Secretary from Dunn. Reference your 1998, March 5, 6 p.m., Mr. Jebb last night informed me the Foreign Office had received your message sent through Halifax on meeting of Ministers April 15 in Paris.

Jebb said Bevin had two difficulties with regard to your proposal. One was that Dominion Prime Ministers have been invited to meet in London the middle of April. He thought this conflict might be solved by making meeting in Paris perhaps around the 20th. Another difficulty he had in mind was to decide whether your proposal for April meeting should go forward before some reply had been received from the Soviet Union by the British on Iran.50 Bevin apparently would rather like to see some light in the Iranian situation before calling together a meeting of the Foreign Ministers. Bevin seemed to feel also that if this meeting were arranged the Deputies would make no more progress but would have to mark time on everything until the Foreign Ministers met. On the last point I told Jebb that my reaction was completely to the contrary and that I felt we would be able to get along better with the rest of the treaty by deliberately setting aside the major points on which we ourselves realize the Deputies would not be able to reach agreement.

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Jebb said Mr. Bevin was giving your message careful consideration and would reply to you through Halifax. I thought it would interest you, however, to have what I learned from Jebb on Mr. Bevin’s first reaction.

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  1. Reference here is to the question of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Iran. For documentation regarding the interest of the United States in the matter and its consideration in the Security Council of the United Nations, see vol. vii, pp. 289 ff.