Austria 823



problems connected with the future management of the funds both in
the period immediately after the funds were released and subsequent to
the final settlement. After asserting that effective planning could not be
carried out in the absence of a time schedule, the Minister posed two
direct questions: (1) Precisely when could Austria expect the release of
the "blocked" counterpart funds?, the next ten days?, the next
month?,
or when?, and (2) When did the U.S. expect to reach a final counterpart
settlement? In commenting on his questions, the Minister said that the
Austrian economy needed the blocked funds right now. However, from
a monetary standpoint, a sudden unplanned release of the funds might
be undesirable and, therefore, Austria must know our intentions in or-
der that they could plan the absorption of the funds so as to insure a
minimum monetary impact. With regard to his second question, the
Minister held that any acceptable final settlement should leave the sub-
sequent disposition of funds solely at the discretion and control of the
Austrian Government. Austria would, however, be prepared to con-
sider entering certain agreements with the United States prior to final
settlement regarding subsequent uses of the funds.
    The Under Secretary replied that he understood the Minister had
already discussed these questions with ICA Director Riddleberger
(Bock had talked to Riddleberger in the morning prior to his meeting
with the Under Secretary)2 who was the competent official in this mat-
ter. He did know, however, that we had not yet been able to overcome
all the administrative difficulties which we had encountered in connec-
tion with the counterpart releases. The Under Secretary pointed out that
certain releases had been made in recent months and that this would in-
dicate that other releases could be expected to follow. As regarded a pre-
cise time schedule, the Under Secretary felt that Mr. Riddleberger
would be better informed than he was. In response to the question on
the final settlement, the Under Secretary assured Bock that we too
wanted to reach a final settlement as expeditiously as possible. We un-
derstood that informal talks between our Embassy in Vienna and the
appropriate Austrian officials had already started and we hoped that
these talks would be the preface to a general agreement. Certainly, with
the good will that existed on both sides it would be possible to reach a
mutually satisfactory agreement in the not too distant future.
    Minister Bock replied that, after talking to Mr. Riddleberger, he still
had no precise idea when the release of counterpart would be effected.
Mr. Riddleberger had, in fact, replied to his questions by stating that the
U.S. was still trying to overcome administrative problems connected



    2No record of the conversation with Riddleberger has been found in Department
of
State files.