874.00/12–745: Telegram
The Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Winant) to the Secretary of State
[Received December 7—6:10 p.m.]
12850. Under Secretary Sargent36 said to us today that Foreign Office was giving consideration to question of breaking “stalemate” in Bulgaria and Rumania.
As he saw the situation, he continued, the present govts in those two countries were firmly entrenched and election in Bulgaria was now a closed issue and in any event free elections in the western sense could probably never be carried out in those countries. His own thinking on ways of resolving the “stalemate” was as follows: it might be well for the British and US to approach the Russians and get Russian assistance in “diluting” the existing govts and then through “nagging” which has borne some fruit in the past get additional concessions for foreign journalists and pledges for a greater degree of individual freedom. Having accomplished that, recognition might be extended and then the way would be open to proceed with the very important work of negotiating peace treaties. Until peace treaties were negotiated [Page 406] and signed with these countries, plans for normal relations could hardly be developed and until peace treaties were negotiated and signed there was little hope of Soviet troop withdrawals taking place. Sargent made it plain that this was how he personally was thinking at this time and that it would be going too far to say that this was the current Foreign Office position.
Sent Dept as 12850; repeated Sofia as 5; repeated Bucharest as 17; repeated Moscow as 406.
- Sir Orme G. Sargent, British Deputy Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.↩