Office of the Historian

714.44A15/2–2748: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Guatemalan Minister of Foreign Relations (Muñoz Meany)

Washington, March 3, 1948.

I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of Your Excellency’s telegram of February 27 concerning the action of the British Government in sending cruisers to Belize.1 My Government has taken note of Your Excellency’s statements and continues to hold the confident hope that the Governments of Guatemala and Great Britain will soon find means of bringing the long-standing Belize controversy to a mutually satisfactory settlement.

George O. Marshall
  1. Telegram of February 27 not printed. In despatch 13, March 3, not printed, the Vice Consul at Belize (Springer) reported that following the arrival at Belize on February 27 of the British cruiser H.M.S. Sheffield, which was reinforced on March 1 by H.M.S. Devonshire, elaborate preparations were made, under the supervision of Vice-Adm. Sir William George Tennant, to repel a possible Guatemalan invasion (714.44A15/3–348). For information on the cablegram of February 27 by the Guatemalan Minister of Foreign Affairs, Enrique Muñoz Meany, to the Pan American Union on this subject, and its consideration by the Governing Board in special meetings on March 17 and 18, 1948, see the Bulletin of the Pan American Union, vol. 82, 1948, p. 284.↩