740.00119 Council/2–846: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in the United Kingdom ( Winant )

top secret
urgent

1345. Top secret for the Ambassador from the Secretary.

Please deliver following message to Bevin:25a

“Confirming my conversation with you in London,26 I have today wired Molotov as follows:

‘When I was in Moscow I urged that the next meeting of the three Foreign Ministers should be held in Washington in April. I then overlooked the fact that we agreed to the holding of a peace conference on or before May first.

‘It occurs to me that you, Mr. Bevin and I will have to be at the peace conference in Paris where we can confer informally as to pending problems. In view of the fact that you and Mr. Bevin will have to be in Paris it would be unreasonable to ask you to come here in April. I am, therefore, willing to agree that the spring meeting scheduled for Washington should not be held here but I certainly will ask that the subsequent meeting be held here.’”27

Byrnes
  1. Ernest Bevin, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
  2. The Secretary of State was in London from January 7 to January 25, 1946, for the meetings of the United Nations General Assembly. No record of his conversation with Foreign Secretary Bevin has been found.
  3. The message to Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union, was transmitted in telegram 247, February 8, 1946, to Moscow, not printed. Molotov’s reply to the Secretary, which was transmitted to the Secretary by Soviet Chargé Fedor Terentyevich Orekhov on February 13, 1946, read in translation as follows:

    “I have received your message in which you suggest that the conference of Three Ministers which was planned to be held at Washington in spring be postponed in connection with forthcoming peace conference in Paris. I agree with your opinion.” (740.00119 Council/2–1346)