740.0011 EW (Peace)/1–2147
The Counselor of the Italian Embassy (di Stefano) to the Assistant Chief of the Division of Southern European Affairs (Dowling)
My Dear Dowling: With reference to our conversation, I quote here below the literal translation of a cable just received from Rome, signed by Mr. Nenni:2
“I have to-day delivered to the Ambassadors of the Four Powers an identical message directed to the Four Foreign Ministers in which—after having observed that none of our requests for modification of the clauses of the Peace Treaty has been accepted in its final drafting and that hence the said Treaty, especially in the territorial clauses, deeply hurts the national conscience of the Italian people—I see myself compelled to formulate the widest reservations and to ask that the principle of revision, in the framework of the U.N. and on the basis of bilateral agreements with the other interested States, be admitted and recognized.”
I know that you are perfectly aware of the importance that the whole Italian public opinion attributes to the question of an acknowledgment of the possibility of revisioning the Treaty in the framework of the U.N.
I feel that the message does not only interpret on the matter Italy’s anxious preoccupation, but as well the feeling of a widespread international principle and necessity, over which Mr. Byrnes evidenced his [Page 516] concern in his letter addressed to Mr. C. L. Sulzberger and published in the New York Times, issue of July 6, 1946.
I don’t need to stress to you the wide importance and repercussions that a clarification of the point by the United States would have in my country.
Believe me [etc.]
- Pietro Nenni, leader of the Italian Socialist Party, Minister of Foreign Affairs, October 11, 1946–January 31, 1947. Nenni submitted his resignation in consequence of the split in the Socialist Party’s congress of January 9, but his successor, Count Carlo Sforza (Independent), did not take over until January 31 when De Gasperi formed his third cabinet.↩