871.00/1–746: Telegram
The Ambassador to the Soviet Union ( Harriman ) to the Secretary of State
urgent
[Received January 7—11:44 a.m.]
20. For the Secretary from Harriman. After discussion within the Commission,20 and further consultations with the party leaders, the Commission has approved for the Peasant Party Hatieganu, Party Executive Committee delegate from Transylvania and for the Liberal Party Romniceanu, former Minister of Finance in the Radescu government.
I am informed that Hatieganu is considered a strongman, and a first-class representative of his party.21 Romniceanu, in private life, is a businessman and banker.
Commission will see the King later to inform him of the above. Afterwards, Groza will seek an audience to propose officially the new Ministers. The positions are to be Ministers of State without Portfolio, which seemed to us and the party leaders the most desirable.
Repeated to London as 3 and Moscow as 6.
- Memoranda of conversation of the Rumanian Commission’s meetings on January 6, 7 p.m. and January 7, noon, are included in the American Official Record of the Rumanian Commission in file 871.00/1–146.↩
- Telegram 20, January 8, to Bucharest, stated that while the available information was not wholly favorable to Hatieganu, the Department was not disposed to raise objection to him or Romniceanu if Harriman considered them acceptable (871.00/1–746).↩