ABSTRACT

The Prime Minister returned to the attack at once, pressing upon the President his view that consultative machinery would end up as 'mere obstruction' and suggesting that the Anglo-Soviet arrangement be given a three-month trial run, to be followed by a 'Big Three' review. For all practical purposes the Cairo talks closed down and the Soviet Union went about seeking an independent solution of the Rumanian question. The decline of Soviet interest in any further haggling with Iuliu Maniu was accompanied by fresh initiatives in Stockholm, where armistice talks had earlier slumped. The compulsion behind the Soviet attempt to seek its own 'separate' armistice agreement with Rumania lay in the overall weakness of Soviet political influence in the country, which in turn necessitated a disproportionate reliance on contacts cultivated through and by the British. On 24 September Soviet-Rumanian forces were on the Hungarian frontier at Mako and had pushed a few miles to the northeast of the town.