500.CC/4–145: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Harriman)
898. Gromyko has qualified Soviet approval of invitations to governmental international organizations to send unofficial observers to San Francisco by the condition that no such observers be nationals of countries not participating in the Conference.29 Your 999, April 1, [Page 330] 1 p.m.30 on basis of which invitations had already gone out does not mention this qualification. Can you have Foreign Office correct Gromyko’s instructions? Please send us text of Molotov’s March 31 note. The only case which has come to our attention so far is that of Sean Lester, an Irish national.
- At the third meeting of the Informal Organizing Group on April 13, Ambassador Gromyko stated that he had received new and specific instructions on this subject; see minutes of meeting, pp. 283, 285. Mr. Kapustin was informed by telephone on April 17 that on that date Sean Lester was leaving the United Kingdom as an official observer for the League of Nations and that “objection to his coming would be a serious inconvenience”. (500.CC/4–1745)↩
- See last portion of footnote 22, p. 153.↩