Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, Eastern Europe; Soviet Union; Eastern Mediterranean, Volume VIII

747C.00/11–1654

No. 397
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Director of the Office of Greek, Turkish, and Iranian Affairs (Baxter)¹

secret

[Washington,] November 16, 1954.

Subject:

• Cyprus

Participants:

• Athanase Politis, Ambassador of Greece
• The Secretary
• William O. Baxter, GTI

The Secretary asked the Greek Ambassador to call today to receive, for transmittal to Prime Minister Papagos, a reply² to the latter’s communications of October 23 addressed to the President and the Secretary.³

After reading the letter, the Ambassador asked whether the United States Government intended to make public at this time any of the views which it contained. He was told that it was considered a secret communication to the Prime Minister.

In reply to a query as to whether we would make a public statement at a later date, it was pointed out that, when the Cyprus item is taken up in committee, we will doubtless make clear to other interested and friendly delegations our opposition to any substantive resolution. The advance knowledge of this may be useful to the Greek Government in making a decision as to whether it should introduce a resolution at the time it presents its case in committee.

The Ambassador also asked whether he could assure his Prime Minister that United States officials had not in the past done any lobbying on the Cyprus question. The Prime Minister was particularly interested because of his belief that the United States had indicated it would maintain “complete neutrality” on this issue. The Secretary said that to the best of his knowledge there had been no activities of that sort. However, in discussions with representatives of other delegations we made no secret of the fact that we considered the Greek request for the inclusion of this item on the General Assembly agenda as both ill-timed and ill-advised.

The Secretary referred to the Prime Minister’s suggestion, made during their recent conversation in Paris,⁴ that discussion on this question might be postponed for this year without prejudice. He indicated that we were exploring this possibility but had not yet reached any decision as to whether such a course would be feasible. The Ambassador asked if Greece might expect the support of the United States if a motion for postponement were made. The Secretary indicated that we might be able to support such a solution.

The Ambassador stated his belief that public opinion on this question is running so high in Greece that it will be very difficult for the Greek Government to agree to a motion for postponement. The Secretary said that he could not understand what advantage the Greek Government hoped to achieve in pushing this issue that would in any way balance the tremendous harm it is doing to Greek relations with Great Britain and Turkey.

1. A handwritten notation by O’Connor on the source text notes that Dulles approved it Nov. 17.
2. Reference is to the letter by Dulles to Papagos, Nov. 16, supra.
3. See footnotes 1 and 3, Document 390.
4. See Document 389.