740.00119 Council/2–1748
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Under Secretary of State (Lovett)
Ambassador Bonnet called to reiterate the importance which his Government attached to reaching agreement at London on (1) international control of Ruhr production, and (2) the future political organization of Germany on a federal basis. He had the impression that we did not expect agreement on these points to be achieved at London and that we hoped merely to secure French agreement to establishing a trizonia. He repeated over and over again that his government would not agree to establishing a trizonia unless and until a substantial measure of agreement had been reached on the other two.
I suggested to him that it would be unwise to overestimate the importance we attached to trizonia and told him that we sincerely hoped it would be possible to reach substantial agreement on all three questions but that they were all of great importance and it might not be possible to reach definitive agreement in one conference. I said I would let our representatives at the London talks know of his démarche.1
- This conversation was reported upon in telegram 537, February 17, to London, not printed. The telegram added that Ambassador Bonnet, on leaving the Department, told reporters that he had stressed the two points enumerated in this memorandum, and he hoped that the forthcoming London talks would definitely determine the future political organization of Germany (740.00119 Council/2–1748).↩