Cablegram 399 WASHINGTON, 1 April 1946, 1.03 p.m.
SECRET
U.N.R.R.A. Council.
1. Your 471 [1] received. We have been able to do as you wish and expect to continue to do so on the Central Committee. There is general agreement that political issues should be avoided as much as possible but they frequently come up.
2. The session adjourned harmoniously on 29th March, to be resumed in the near future in Washington to discuss a report by the Administration on new food plans and the responses of Governments and International bodies on procedures. You should receive all relevant information in time for consideration. The adjourned meeting is meant to dramatize the situation further and to provoke more action in the United States of America and elsewhere where more could be done.
3. I shall be sending you by airmail, in the next day or two, a full report covering the principal issues, together with the main documents. Three copies of all documents will follow in due course. The resolutions on food are lengthy and include no new principles except publicity of reasons as stated in our last telegram, 360. [2] They are the result of exhausting and detailed argument and compromise but are satisfactory.
4. The same is true generally of other contentious issues, except only the question of the conduct of Soviet occupying forces in Austria. This was, in our opinion, pressed excessively by the U.S.A. [3] The Russian group refused to discuss or vote on it but made no demonstration and the resolutions as passed are reasonable.
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1 Document 145.
2 Document 149.
3 See Document 141.
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[AA:A1067, R46/3/5]