Office of the Historian

800.6363/1153: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Argentina (Armour)

Washington, April 30, 1943—9 p.m.

628. Your 895, April 24, 3 p.m.34 From the Under Secretary.35 The file on these negotiations has been reviewed. It indicates that the [Page 384] Ministry of Foreign Relations and the Ministry of Agriculture seem to prefer an immediate agreement with regard to Argentina’s collaboration to insure the maximum supply of petroleum to the other American republics using the limited facilities now available.…

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

It is now over 9 months since the negotiations were opened in order to bring about Argentina’s full participation in the Pool. As the Department stated in its telegram no. 1699 of November 10, 1942,35a its “primary objective in present negotiations is to secure effective collaboration of Argentina in the joint effort among republics to insure maximum supply of oil to all republics with limited facilities now available”. This has been and still is the primary objective in these negotiations. The reading of the file indicates that it is possible immediately to close a satisfactory arrangement with regard to the utilization of Argentine tankers in the Pool. If in your judgment the present scope of the negotiations… is likely to involve any further delay in arriving at an agreement on tankers you are requested to inform the Department immediately by telegram as to the best terms upon which Argentina will agree to make the tankers available… In appraising such terms the Department will bear in mind (a) that the other American republics are and will continue to be supplied with oil regardless of Argentina’s action, (b) that tankers are rapidly being built in the United States at an expenditure of approximately 5,000 tons of steel per single 16,000–ton tanker, and (c) that this Government has no intention of depriving American ship-builders or other producers of essential war material of fabricated steel equipment and diverting it to Argentina in a manner which will work a further hardship on other American interests there without very definite assurance that the war effort can be served better by this course than by any other which is open.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Please let me know your decision. I will appreciate your keeping the Department fully advised by telegram of the day-to-day developments of the negotiations. [Welles.]

Hull
  1. Not printed.↩
  2. Sumner Welles.↩
  3. Foreign Relations, 1942, vol. v, p. 423.↩