881.00/1796
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Chief of the Division of Near Eastern Affairs (Murray)
Mr. Butler, British Chargé d’Affaires, called on me by appointment on November 12, when I informed him that this Government, in a telegraphic communication sent on November 9, had instructed the American Ambassador in Madrid to make written representations to the Spanish Foreign Minister as a result of Spanish activities in the [Page 791] International Zone of Tangier subsequent to the Spanish occupation of that Zone on June 14, 1940.
I referred in particular to the order issued on November 3, 1940 by the “Chief of the Column of Occupation of the Zone of Tangier” abolishing the Committee of Control, the Legislative Assembly and the Mixed Bureau of Information in the International Zone as of that date.
I told Mr. Butler that in as much as his Government had been good enough to inform our Chargé d’Affaires in London that representations had been made at Madrid by the British Ambassador there as a result of recent Spanish actions in Tangier, I thought he might wish to inform his Government of the present representations of this Government.
I reminded Mr. Butler at the same time that the basis of our representations in Madrid were not the same as those of Great Britain by reason of the fact that this Government was not a party, nor has it adhered to, the Convention of December 18, 1923, revised on July 25, 1928, regarding the organization of the Statute of the Tangier Zone; that this Government, however, possesses certain treaty rights in Morocco which have been called to the attention of the Spanish Government and which we intend to maintain. Our treaty rights in Morocco flow from our treaty of 1836,21 from the Madrid Convention of 188022 and the Algeciras Act of 1906.23 The 1836 treaty granted us capitulatory rights in the whole of Morocco, which we alone among all the great Powers still possess.
As for the present Spanish action in Tangier, presumably designed to abolish the International Zone and absorb it into the Spanish Zone, I pointed out to Mr. Butler that this action was wholly inconsistent with the written assurances which we had received last June from the Spanish Government as well as the oral assurances which we had received from the Spanish Foreign Minister on November 5, 1940 concerning the political status of Tangier. Under the circumstances, therefore, although we were not in a position to protest any action of the Spanish authorities in violation of the Tangier Statute, we nevertheless felt justified in recalling the above-mentioned assurances of competent Spanish officials in Madrid and in expressing the understanding of this Government that the present Spanish actions in Tangier do not represent in any way a departure from the policy of the Spanish Government with respect to the Tangier Zone as formally communicated to our Ambassador in Madrid by the Spanish Foreign Minister on June 14, last.
- Signed at Meccanez, September 16, 1836; Hunter Miller (ed.), Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America, vol. 4, p. 33.↩
- Signed at Madrid, July 3, 1880, Foreign Relations, 1880, p. 917.↩
- Signed at Algeciras, April 7, 1906, ibid., 1906, pt. 2, p. 1495.↩