740.00119 Control (Bulgaria)/8–1646
The Acting Secretary of State to the Secretary of War (Patterson)
My Dear Mr. Secretary: I have received your communications of August 10 and 16, 1946 requesting the views of the Department of State regarding the future of the United States military representation on the Allied Control Commission for Bulgaria.84
The questions raised by General Robertson regarding the continuation and the reduction of his mission in Bulgaria have been considered by the Department previously, and have now been given additional consideration in the light of General Robertson’s letter of July 31, 1946, of his telegram of August 15, 1946, and of recent developments in Bulgaria. Although it is realized that there are undesirable aspects to a situation wherein the United States is formally represented on a body upon whose actions the United States representative has been unable to exercise any effective influence, it is nevertheless believed that the United States Government should not take the initiative of discontinuing United States representation on the Allied Conrol Commission for Bulgaria at this time. I may add that an aide-mémoire from the British Embassy at Washington dated October 9, 194685 [Page 157] stated that the British Government was strongly opposed to the withdrawal of the military missions in Bulgaria until the peace treaty has come into force. As to General Robertson’s question regarding the gradual reduction of the personnel of his mission, it seems to me that this matter is a corollary to the question of the continuation of the mission, and that the decision thereon should be premised upon the assumption that the mission’s duties will remain at approximately their present level until such time as the Allied Control Commission is disbanded.
Sincerely yours,
- The memorandum of August 10, 1946, from the Secretary of War to the Department of State, transmitted a copy of a letter of July 31, 1946, from General Robertson in Sofia to the War Department, drawing particular attention to one section of that letter which expressed General Robertson’s views on the continuance of the United States delegation to the Allied Control Commission for Bulgaria (740.00119 Control (Bulgaria)/8–1046). The same section of General Robertson’s July 31 letter was quoted in full in Barnes memorandum of August 23 to the Secretary of State, p. 133. The memorandum of August 16, 1946, from the Secretary of War to the Department of State, reported that General Robertson had cabled the War Department on August 13 that he believed the time had come to begin a gradual reduction of the personnel assigned to his mission in Bulgaria in order to facilitate its ultimate closing (740.00119 Control (Bulgaria)/8–1646).↩
- For the substance of the British Embassy aide-mémoire of October 9, see telegram 5412, Secdel 1084, October 9, to Paris, p. 152.↩