Office of the Historian

Lot 20, Box 1518: Telegram

The United States Special Representative in Europe (Harriman) to the Secretary of State

confidential
us urgent
Paris, June 4, 1948—7 p. m.

Toeca 79. For Thorp, Henderson and Taylor. Nebolsine, Bonesteel and I have had informal talks with Snoy, Alphand, Hall-Patch, who inform as follows:

1.
They understand clearly that negotiations must take place in Washington as promptly as possible.
2.
The bilaterals will be discussed informally by the council tomorrow June 5.
3.
Thereafter instructions will be issued by the respective governments to their Ambassadors in Washington.
4.
It is strongly felt that the only way certain difficulties can be smoothed out will be for the Ambassadors of UK, France and Belgium to go over these points with the State Department possibly as early as Tuesday of next week (Hall-Patch is dubious as to whether the instructions will reach UK Embassy by middle of next week because Cabinet must review them and they will not act until after they receive report of informal discussions among sixteen nations to be held in Paris tomorrow).
5.
The scope of the presentations by the two or three Ambassadors will probably include among others:
a.
Strong objection to the tone of the draft bilateral which is thought to be unnecessarily non-reciprocal.
b.
There is considerable resistance to article 10, exchange rates, which is said to be unacceptable in its present form.
c.
There is considerable objection to MFN treatment, particularly Japan and Korea and the thought that the whole topic should be handled outside the bilateral.
d.
There is resistance to going beyond the specific language of the act, but particular examples have not been given us.
e.
The non-reciprocal character of the arbitration article 16 is objectionable.
f.
Article 17, paragraph 3, is regarded as tending to require compliance with acts of Congress not yet enacted and is therefore objectionable.
6.
All three strongly urge that text of present draft be held confidential as it would be found most objectionable to public opinion in many European countries.1 In the course of discussion both Hall-Patch [Page 447] and Alphand indicated that they did not think their governments would want to present bilateral in present form to their respective Parliaments and Alphand emphasized that in view of far-reaching character of the proposed agreements the governments would have to present them to their Parliaments.
7.
For estimate current French political situation please see regular State Department information cables this topic.
8.
All three suggest further meeting with Bonesteel and Nebolsine Monday morning to discuss instructions to be issued to Ambassadors. If acceptable to State the three Ambassadors wish to negotiate with State all principal points in advance of conclusion of bilateral negotiations with any other participating country.
9.
They express the fear that one of the participating nations may be prevailed upon to accept the bilateral in its present form and thus crystallize the situation. This would make for great difficulty both for the US and for the other countries since the present form deemed unacceptable to several countries. On the other hand there is apprehension in some quarters that those nations concluding negotiations early would not get the best trade. Accordingly, all three urge that their proposed procedure (paragraph 8) would result in most expeditious conclusions of all negotiations.

Harriman
  1. Marginal notation: “See dispatch from London in Wash. Post!” With reference to this newspaper article, telegram 2485 from London, June 5, 1948, not printed, notes that “Makins regarded as unfortunate the leak contained in Don Cook Paris Herald Tribune article June 3 with London dateline which emphasized significance of devaluation question and also referred to uneasiness caused by general tone of bilaterals. UK was anxious keep entire approach confidential.” (840.50 Recovery/6–548)↩