839.51/4628
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Under Secretary of State (Welles)
The Dominican Minister called to see me this morning and gave me to read two letters addressed to him by his new Minister for Foreign Affairs. In the first letter the Minister was authorized to resume unofficial and personal conversations with the Department of State with a view to ascertaining whether some basis could be found for a satisfactory modification of the 1924 convention. In the second the Minister was requested to ascertain whether the Department of State would be willing to discuss with the Dominican Government the possibility of reaching a basis for a trade agreement.11
With regard to the first point I told the Minister that I should be very happy to talk this problem over with him and that I would set some day the latter part of this week for an initial conversation. With regard to the second, I told the Minister that I would ask some of the appropriate officials of the Trade Agreements Division to have [Page 501] a clarifying conversation with him and that I would be glad to notify him of the arrangements made.
I asked the Minister if he had any information concerning the political situation in the Dominican Republic. He said that he was never sent any information but that his wife was now in his own country and that he hoped when she came back the middle of next month that he would be able to obtain from her some accurate information as to what was going on. He gave me the impression that he sensed a condition of uncertainty in Santo Domingo and that no one was sure just what Trujillo was going to do once the new government was installed.