740.00119 European War 1939/2069: Telegram
The Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Harriman) to the Secretary of State
[Received January 12—1:20 p.m.]
84. I have been requested to communicate to my Government the contents of a Foreign Office note dated January 10, which is marked “absolutely secret”. The Embassy’s translation follows:
“The British Ambassador in the Soviet Union, Mr. Kerr,10 informed the Soviet Government on November 15, 1943, that the British Government had received a message from Mr. Maniu stating that he desired to send a special delegate to discuss measures for effecting a change in the political regime in Rumania.
In the letter it was noted that this message of Mr. Maniu was received before he had been informed that the British Government would now [not] consider any approaches from the Rumanian side unless they were also addressed to the Governments of the United States and the Soviet Union and unless they were made in the form of a proposal for the signature of an unconditional surrender before the three principal Allies.
[Page 135]On November 18, 1943, the People’s Commissar11 informed Mr. Kerr that the Soviet Government agreed with the point of view of the British Government concerning the contents of the reply which should be sent to Maniu. In the letter it was also stated that ‘the Soviet Government, inasmuch as it is a question of Rumania, considers absolutely necessary the participation of a Soviet representative in direct conversations with the delegate from Maniu’.
Supplementary to this, the Soviet Government of [on] January 10, 1944 informed the British Embassy that ‘the Soviet Government has authorized the Soviet Ambassador to the Yugoslav and Greek Governments in Cairo, N. V. Novikov, to conduct conversations jointly with the representatives of the Government of Great Britain and the United States on the one hand and with the Emissary from Maniu on the other’.
At the same time the Soviet Ambassador, N. V. Novikov, has been instructed ‘to communicate this decision of the Soviet Government also to Mr. Stevenson, British Ambassador to the Yugoslav Government who visited him recently and who, after stating that the arrival in Cairo of an emissary from Maniu was expected in the near future, requested that the Soviet representative arrive there in time for the meeting’.[”]