THE SOVIET UNION



obligations of the United Nations Charter on the part of all members
is there any hope for a stable and peaceful world. Events which have
taken place in the Near East, in Asia, and later in the early sessions
of the present Security Council meeting had caused doubts in the
minds of the American people that the Soviet Union really intended
fully to support the United Nations as an agency for insuring world
peace to the extent that the United States intended to support it, al-
though by the end of the war we had been assured that unqualified
support would be forthcoming from the USSR. These apprehen-
sions had been somewhat allayed by the Generalissimo Stalin's state-
ment to the Associated Press, but more was needed.
   The President had asked me to say that both he and Secretary
 Byrnes had always believed that when the Generalissimo made a
 statement or a commitment he meant to keep it, and the American
 people hoped that events would confirm, that belief, but it would be
 misinterpreting the character of the United States to assume that be-
 cause we are basically peaceful and deeply interested in world security,
 we are either divided, weak or unwilling to face our responsibilities.
 If the people of the United States were ever to become convinced that
 we are faced with a wave of progressive aggression on the part of any
 powerful nation or group of nations, we would react exactly as we
 have in the past.
   The fact is that we are faced in America, as is the USSR, with the
responsibility of making important long-range decisions on our fuzz
ture military policy, and these decisions will depend to a large extent
on what our people believe to be the policies of the Soviet Union. If
each of our two nations is convinced of the other's sincerity in sup-
porting the principles of the United Nations Charter, then these poli-
cies can be settled without difficulty in the way we most earnestly
desire. On the other hand, if both nations remain apprehensive and
suspicious of each other, we may both find ourselves embarked upon an
expensive policy of rearmament and the maintenance of large military
establishments which we wish to avoid.
  Generalissimo Stalin replied at length and in great detail, and his
remarks included counter-charges directed against our own actions and
policies. The sequence and length of his argument made it obvious
that the United States' comments had been anticipated.
  He discussed the Iranian question, beginning with a history of
Soviet-Iranian relations from the time of the Treaty of Versailles as
known to the Department. He stated quite frankly that Qavam~s
predecessor 76 was definitely unfriendly to Russia and that pressure
' Ibrahim Hakimi was the predecessor of Ahmad Qavam as Prime Minister
of Iran.



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