Office of the Historian

740.00119 Control (Austria)/4–1745

The Department of State to the British Embassy

Aide-Mémoire

The American Embassy at Belgrade has also received from the Under-Secretary of the Yugoslav Ministry of Foreign Affairs a note in which the Yugoslav Government expressed a desire to participate in the Allied occupation of Austria, similar to the note referred to in the Aide-Mémoire (Ref. 1165/11/45) prepared in the British Embassy at Washington on April 13, 1945.61

The American Government also considers the Yugoslav Government’s request inadmissible for the reasons outlined in paragraph three in the Aide-Mémoire just mentioned,62 and would agree to a joint reply to this effect from the American, British, Soviet, and French Governments.

Washington , April 21, 1945.
  1. Not printed.↩
  2. In this paragraph the Yugoslav request was rejected. “Any departure from the principle that only the Great Powers should be responsible for zones of occupation would at once create difficulties with other European Allied governments and there is a special objection to the Yugoslav Government’s proposal insofar as they have already put forward territorial claims for those parts of Austria which they now wish to occupy. By acceding to the Yugoslav Government’s request the final territorial settlement would inevitably be prejudged.” (740.00119 Control (Austria)/4–1345)↩