838.51/2348: Telegram
The Minister in Haiti (Munro) to the Secretary of State
[Received 4:05 p.m.]
127. Legation’s 126, October 26, 10 a.m. After a strong protest against our action in continuing payments to the American treaty services in spite of the Government’s action both the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Finance appear to have accepted the situation. After a long conference with the Minister of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday and another at which the Minister of Finance and the Financial Adviser were present yesterday substantial progress was made toward a general accord on the budget. The Haitian Government has apparently abandoned its demand that the 5 percent and 15 percent funds make contributions to general expenses and the Financial Adviser has stated that the total expended for salaries and allowances in his service [was] lately reduced by from 3 percent to 5 percent in order to make the 5 percent and 15 percent funds cover expenses. This statement will enable the Haitian Government to refute charges that employees in the Treaty Services are exempt from sacrifices imposed upon other Haitian employees.
The Minister of Finance promised to furnish the Financial Adviser at once with those portions of the proposed budget which have not yet been submitted to him. We have reached an informal general agreement on the manner in which the Government will reduce its expenses within 32,000,000 gourdes. We shall proceed at once to discuss an exchange of notes covering the statements in the preambles of the finance laws and the Financial Adviser’s objections to their other provisions. The Haitian Government alleges that it did not dare to have payments made under the emergency budget for October because of the almost certain political attacks by Congressmen who under this budget would not have received their extra allowances. In order to [Page 538] help the Government in this matter I stated yesterday that if the Government would indicate its acceptance in principle of our views on the finance laws and would agree to a satisfactory general formula for balancing the budget I would be prepared to authorize payment in full to the Senators and Congressmen together with payments provided for by the emergency budget without waiting for the preparation of a detailed budget which will necessarily require several days.