890g.6363/316
The Ambassador in Great Britain (Dawes) to the Secretary of
State
London, December 24, 1931.
[Received
January 6, 1932.]
No. 2479
Sir: I have the honor to refer to the
Department’s instruction No. 1011, November 27, 1931, regarding the
question of oil concessions in Iraq, and to enclose a copy of a Foreign
Office note, dated December 23, 1931, received in reply to an informal
communication, a copy of which was transmitted to the Department with
the Embassy’s despatch No. 2449, December 10, 1931.27
I should appreciate instructions as to whether any further action should
be taken in this matter.28
Respectfully yours,
For the Ambassador:
Ray
Atherton
Counselor of
Embassy[Enclosure]
The British Assistant Under Secretary of State
for Foreign Affairs (Oliphant) to
the American Counselor of Embassy (Atherton)
[London,] 23 December, 1931.
No. E 6320/5/93
My Dear Atherton: I duly received your
letter of December 9th in which you were so good as to define
further the attitude of the United States Government concerning the
grant of concessions in Iraq.
After sympathetic examination of the points which you have raised,
[Page 611]
we remain of the
opinion that the legal position was correctly set forth in my
earlier letter of July 17th. I hope, however, that you will agree
that further discussion of this point would be of academic rather
than of practical importance. For, as I understand the position, the
main contention of your Government is—details apart—that nationals
of the United States should be given reasonable opportunities to
compete for concessions in Iraq; and as was clearly shown in my
letter of July 17th, such reasonable opportunities were, in fact,
given to United States nationals in the particular case which has
given rise to the present correspondence.
Yours very sincerely,
