Foreign Relations of the United States, 1946, Paris Peace Conference: Documents, Volume IV

CFM Files

The Greek Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Dragoumis) to the Secretary of State

Paris, 8 October, 1946.

Dear Mr. Secretary: Perhaps you will allow me, in continuation of my letter of the 1st October,⁹⁰ to send you the following further observations on the matters raised therein:

a) No one familiar with Greece’s history of the past thirty years will be surprised at our demand for an effective guarantee in the form of an adjustment of the Greek–Bulgarian boundary-line.

b) I was not at the time aware that, after submitting the agreed motion on the 28th September by which, in fact, the Military Commission declined to reply to the questions put by the Political and Territorial Commission, the American and British Delegations contemplated proposing the establishment of a demilitarised zone.⁹¹

Had I known of your Delegation’s intention, even just before the actual meeting, I should have made every effort to overcome the reluctance of our technical experts, who, not unnaturally, were averse to substituting a moral or political safeguard for an effective frontier adjustment.

c) The only remaining possibility is to bring the matter before the Council of Four, where, however, there is danger that the Soviet representative may exploit, to Greece’s detriment, the position taken by the latter at the Military Commission.

It is therefore desirable—as I see it—that the question be raised in the Council jointly, if possible, by the American and British representatives. Were the Council to agree to embody in the Treaty a clause relating to demilitarisation of the zone in question, this would not, it is true, constitute adequate security for Greece’s frontiers. Politically, however, the position would be improved in that the Greek Government, or any other member of the United Nations, would be enabled thereby to demand some form of control, for the purpose of ascertaining whether Bulgaria was, in fact, respecting the provisions of the clause.

Believe me [etc.]

Philip Dragoumis

90. No copy of the letter under reference has been found in Department files. A memorandum of the Byrnes–Dragoumis conversation of October 1 is printed in vol. iii, p. 614.
91. See the United States Delegation Journal account of the proceedings of the 29th Meeting of the Military Commission, September 28, vol. iii, p. 586.