868.5151/103: Telegram
The Acting Secretary of State to the Chargé in Greece (Morris)
33. Your 73, July 30, 5 p.m. and 75, August 1, 10 p.m. The Department approves of your informal efforts to secure a more liberal interpretation of subhead (c) of exemptions. It desires you at once to present a formal note to the Greek Government making full reservation of the rights of the United States and its nationals pending an opportunity for the Department to study the complete text of the decree. In presenting this note you should add orally such comments as may appropriately serve to impress forcefully upon the Foreign Office the concern with which the Department views the enactment of measures of the nature of the decree in question.
Please furnish complete text of decree by mail together with detailed interpretive background. Pending the receipt of this information keep the Department currently informed by telegraph of important developments. In addition telegraph the following information:
- (1)
- attitude of other governments as soon as ascertained.
- (2)
- resume of that portion of the decree which provides that the Greek Government rather than the ordinary banks or the Bank of Greece shall profit by the forced conversion at an arbitrary rate.
- (3)
- the form in which banks have held reserves against their foreign currency accounts and whether such reserves have been maintained in Greece or abroad.
- (4)
- whether the Greek Government will acquire as a result of this operation a net sum of foreign exchange without due compensation.
- (5)
- an estimate of the amount of American owned foreign currency accounts in Greek banks.