867.24/2–545: Telegram
The Acting Secretary of State to the Ambassador in the United Kingdom ( Winant )26
901. The Turkish Government is reluctant to sign a lend-lease agreement without an understanding that the agreement is not retroactive.
Turkish Government partly explains its position by saying (1) that it received American goods via the British, (2) that the British had required Turkey to pay for lend-lease deliveries including those of American origin by charging the same against the arms credit extended to Turkey by Great Britain and that in consequence insofar as the Turkish Government was aware American lend-lease deliveries had already been paid for, and (3) that if Turkey formally acknowledged that Turkey had received lend-lease articles from the United States, Turkey might find herself under a double obligation for the same goods and might even be asked to pay twice.
Attitude of Department and FEA of course is that the Turks are not obligated to British for lend-lease articles of American origin. Department and FEA assume that Britain would agree that any economic or financial obligation arising from the delivery by the British of lend-lease goods of American origin is owed to the United States even though American goods may have been delivered in discharge of a British political or military undertaking. If British views are similar to ours please inquire urgently whether British [Page 1300] would formally state to the Turkish Government that lend-lease articles of American origin are not charged against Turkey in an economic or financial sense under the arms credit arrangement or other undertaking, but that the economic and financial obligations arising from the delivery of such goods to Turkey are obligations owed to the United States.27
- Repeated to Ankara as telegram 164.↩
- In telegram 1461, February 10, 1945, 7 p.m., from London, the Department was advised that the matter had been taken up with the Foreign Office and that assurance had been given “that matter would be given immediate consideration and that we would receive its reply shortly”. The Embassy also reminded the Department of a 1944 letter, dated July 21, 1944, from Winthrop Brown of the Mission for Economic Affairs in London to William T. Stone, Director, Special Areas Branch, Foreign Economic Administration, which repeated British assurances that no charge had been made against the Anglo-Turkish arms credit with respect to any identifiable Lend-Lease equipment or materials either military or civil. (867.24/2–1045)↩