123 Heath, Donald R.
The Secretary of State to the Bulgarian Chargé ( Voutov )1
The Secretary of State presents his compliments to the Chargé d’Affaires ad interim of Bulgaria and refers to his note No. 187 of January 19, 19502 requesting the recall from Bulgaria of the American Minister, Donald R. Heath as persona non grata.
In reply thereto the American Minister at Sofia has been instructed to deliver the following note to the Bulgarian Government:3
“The Legation of the United States of America has been instructed by the United States Government to deliver to the Bulgarian Government the following reply to the note verbale delivered to the Department of State by the Bulgarian Legation in Washington on January 19, 1950 requesting the recall from Bulgaria of the American Minister.
The charges on which the Bulgarian Government has based this demand are wholly unfounded, as the Bulgarian Government itself is fully aware. Moreover, the Under Secretary of State, Mr. James E. Webb on December 12, 1949 stressed to Dr. Peter Voutov, the Bulgarian Chargé d’Affaires in Washington, that the United States toot a very serious view of such reckless accusations against the American Minister, which caused this Government to question the Bulgarian Government’s intentions with respect to the maintenance of normal and friendly relations with the United States.4
The Bulgarian Government has over a period of two years increasingly subjected the Legation to a series of indignities and restrictions which have now made it virtually impossible for the Legation to perform its normal diplomatic and consular functions. In addition to crippling restrictions on the entry and movement of United States officials assigned to the Legation, the Bulgarian Government has pursued a campaign of persecution against the Legation’s Bulgarian employees whose only crime has been their association with the Legation. This campaign has resulted in the execution of two such employees, the death of a third after maltreatment by the police, and [Page 508] the arrest and torture of others. All of these employees were engaged only in such routine duties as is accepted as normal practice in diplomatic missions throughout the civilized world.
The United States, in renewing formal relations with Bulgaria in 1947, pointed out that the establishment of diplomatic relations did not in itself imply approval or disapproval of the acts and policies of the Bulgarian Government. It has been the hope of the United States Government that minimum standards of international comity with regard to the maintenance of diplomatic intercourse would be observed. The Bulgarian Government, however, has fallen far below even those minimum standards in conducting its relations with the United States.
Accordingly, unless the Bulgarian Government withdraws its note of January 19 and demonstrates its willingness to observe established international standards of conduct, the United States Government must conclude that the Bulgarian Government does not desire to maintain normal relations. In these circumstances the United States Government will be obliged to withdraw the United States diplomatic mission from Bulgaria and ask for the recall of the Bulgarian diplomatic mission from the United States.”
- For the circumstances attending the delivery of this note to Chargé Voutov, see Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Thompson’s memorandum of conversation, supra.↩
- Ante, p. 504.↩
- Minister Heath delivered the note quoted below to the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry on the afternoon of January 20. The text of the quoted note was released to the press in Washington on January 20.↩
- For Under Secretary of State Webb’s memorandum of his conversation with Chargé Voutov on December 12, 1949, see Foreign Relations, 1949, vol. v, p. 373.↩