CFM Files
United States Delegation Journal
USDel (PC) (Journal) 31
A discussion took place on the Record of the previous meeting which had been prepared by the Secretariat. M. Pijade (Yugoslavia) objected to the fact that the Record did not state that the Yugoslav proposal to invite the Bulgarian Delegation to appear before the Commission had been accepted; the decision was not given in the language of the proposal, nor was there any reference to the relevant document. The Chairman conceded that the Record was unsatisfactory and said that in the future he would look over the Records before they were circulated in order to avoid such misunderstandings. At his request the Commission deferred adoption of the Record until the next meeting. M. Pipinelis (Greece) said that according to his recollection the Commission had reserved the question of at what stage in the discussion of Article 1 the Bulgarian Delegation would be heard. He did not think the matter sufficiently important to be the subject of long debate and accordingly proposed that the Bulgarian Delegation be heard immediately. This proposal was accepted.
M. Kolarov presented the views of the Bulgarian Government on the subject of the Greek-Bulgarian frontier. He objected to the text of Article 1 which would confirm the frontier of January 1, 1941 on the ground that it represented an injustice imposed upon Bulgaria in 1919. He had no objections to the Article as it affected Bulgaria’s frontiers with Yugoslavia and Rumania and said that Bulgaria’s good relations with those two countries were a proof that the Balkan peoples were capable of settling their disputes by themselves.
M. Kolarov argued that the present frontier was unjust, and that the Greek claim for further territory amounting to one tenth of the area of Bulgaria was utterly without foundation. He said that the real motive of the Greek claim was not the need for protection but the desire to acquire Bulgaria’s best tobacco land and to stifle Bulgaria [Page 342] economically. In defense of the Bulgarian claim to Western Thrace, M. Kolarov cited numerous historical sources attesting the Bulgarian character of this territory, the peace of Bucharest of 1913, and the opinions of American and other experts at the Peace Conference of 1919. He noted that the decision taken at Lausanne in 1923 to award this territory to Greece had been taken without the participation of the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. He claimed that Western Thrace was absolutely essential to Bulgaria for economic reasons, and that its transfer to Bulgaria would be of great benefit to the commerce of many countries.
In the course of his speech M. Kolarov devoted considerable time to describing Bulgaria’s contribution to the Allied victory in the war and the democratic nature of the present Bulgarian regime.15
- For a more detailed summary of the Kolarov speech, see Stephen G. Xydis, Greece and the Great Powers, 1944–1947 (Thessalonika, Institute for Balkan Studies, 1963), p. 321.↩