No. 92
Editorial Note
This compilation is organized around the major initiatives taken by the United States unilaterally, or in conjunction with other countries, which were aimed at a solution of the Trieste dispute. As such, it is not a complete record of the nearly continuous discussions and complex negotiations regarding Trieste during these years. Editorial notes summarizing many of these discussions and negotiations have been provided in order to condense the record. While the primary focus is on the diplomacy which helped produce the settlement of October 5, 1954, documentation is also included which relates to important developments within the Free Territory of Trieste itself and to the military aspects of the question as perceived by United States policymakers.
The majority of the documentation has been taken from Department of State file 750G.00, where nearly all the documents in Department central files pertaining to Trieste are located. Of the various lot files researched, the most useful has been the Italian Desk files, lot 58 D 357, which contains, among other documentation, much material relating to consideration of the Trieste issue within the Department of State, as well as copies of most of the military cable traffic on Trieste furnished the Department of State by the Department of Defense. For this reason, the editor did not conduct research in the extensive records of the Allied Military Government for Trieste, which are stored at the National Records Center, Suitland, Maryland.
For reasons of brevity, the documentation presented here covers only
the concluding phases of the negotiations regarding Trieste, i.e.,
beginning in September 1953. Omitted from the compilation is
material, for example, on Philip Mosely’s mission to Belgrade in
January 1952; the signing in London on May 9, 1952, of a memorandum
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of understanding between
Italy, the United Kindgom, and the United States regarding the
administration of Zone A; and efforts by the United Kingdom and the
United States to secure a settlement of the Trieste issue prior to
the Italian national elections of June 1953, including the mission
to Italy in April of that year by the Director of the Office of
Western European Affairs, Homer M.
Byington.