Foreign Relations of the United States, 1951, Europe: Political and Economic Developments, Volume IV, Part 1

No. 85

750G.0221/1–351: Telegram

The Chargé in the Soviet Union ( Barbour ) to the Secretary of State ¹

secret

Moscow , January 3, 1951, 2 p.m.

1285. As indicated Embtel 1239, December 23,² we perceive numerous advantages in bringing to end present anomalous status of FTT along lines acceptable to both Italy and Yugoslavia. However, we think that to achieve bi-partite solution realism would require our taking a somewhat more active part than that apparently envisaged by Department (Deptel 422, December 30).³ So long as our declaration of March 20, 1948⁴ remains on record, we should think it unlikely that any Italian Government could accept anything less than restoration of all territory of FTT. This leads us to believe we cannot avoid possibly unpalatable and difficult task of replacing principles imbodied in that declaration with something more conducive to mutual agreement and informing both Yugoslavia and Italy to that effect. In short, if we wish to bring about amicable settlement of this problem we shall probably have to work in direction of partition of territory along present occupation lines (zone A to Italy and zone B to Yugoslavia), possibly with fairly minor adjustments to take account of ethnic distribution, and at least some measure of population exchange. Acceptance of such an approach might militate against the secret negotiations contemplated by Deptel 422, since for its own political future Italian Government might at some preliminary stage need to condition Italian people publicly to acceptance compromise and it might be desirable we ease lot De Gasperi by assuming openly degree onus for changed position in interest long range advantages effective settlement. In any event, we continue to feel that every effort should be made to reach bipartite solution this problem as soon as possible.

Barbour

1. Repeated to Rome, Belgrade, London, Paris, and Trieste.
2. Not printed, but see footnote 6, supra.
3. The same as telegram 2715, supra.
4. For text of the parallel notes issued by the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, which favored the return of the Free Territory of Trieste to Italy, see Foreign Relations, 1948, vol. iii, p. 517.