740.00119 Control (Austria)/4–1046
The Department of State to the British Embassy
Memorandum
The Department of State is in accord with the view of the British Government, as set forth in the Aide-Mémoire of April 10,98 concerning the desirability of resisting Soviet demands for the ownership of non-industrial and non-commercial land in Austria, under the terms of the Berlin Agreement.
- 2.
- It is agreed that no explicit basis can be found in existing Allied agreements to distinguish non-industrial and non-commercial land from other German assets. It is believed, however, that an effort should be made to eliminate land from German assets taken, by seeking a solution to the German assets question, in which the powers signatory to the Berlin Agreement strictly limit their claims in the light of the Moscow Declaration of November 1943, and other Allied agreements relating to Austria.
- 3.
- It is believed that, should the U.S.S.R. insist on the inclusion of non-industrial and non-commercial land, very great emphasis should be placed in negotiation upon the Forced Transfer Declaration, and that rights to ownership under the Berlin Agreement should be subjected, on a case by case analysis of title, to that Declaration. This should result in both a limitation of the total amount of land taken, and its dispersal in a manner such as to avoid a possible strategic pattern of location.
- 4.
- Finally, it is believed that the other powers concerned should insist that any ownership rights to land arising out of the Berlin Agreement, as in the case of other types of German assets in Austria, should be subjected in all respects to Austrian law.
- 5.
- These views, as well as the Aide-Mémoire of the British Government of April 10, on this subject, will be forwarded to General Clark for appropriate action.
Washington,
May 8,
1946.
- Not printed.↩