Your joint message of August 19 has reached me.

I fully share your opinion and that of Mr Roosevelt concerning the importance of a meeting between the three of us. At the same time I earnestly request you to appreciate my position at a time when our armies are exerting themselves to the utmost against the main forces of Hitler and when Hitler, far from having withdrawn a single division from our front, has already moved, and keeps moving, fresh divisions to the Soviet-German front. At a moment like this I cannot, in the opinion of all my colleagues, leave the front without injury to our military operations to go to so distant a point as Fairbanks, even though, had the situation on our front been different, Fairbanks would doubtless have been a perfectly suitable place for our meeting, as I indeed thought before.

As to a meeting between representatives of our states, and perhaps representatives in charge of foreign affairs, I share your view of the advisability of such a meeting in the near future. However, the meeting should not be restricted to the narrow bounds of investigation, but should concern itself with practical preparations so that after the conference our Governments might take specific decisions and thus avoid delay in reaching decisions on urgent matters.

Hence I think I must revert to my proposal for fixing beforehand the range of problems to be discussed by the representatives of the three states and drafting the proposals they will have to discuss and submit to our Governments for final decision.

2. Yesterday we received from Mr Kerr the addenda and corrections to the joint message in which you and Mr Roosevelt informed me of the instructions sent to General Eisenhower in connection with the surrender terms worked out for Italy during the discussions with General Castellano. I and my colleagues believe that the instructions given to General Eisenhower follow entirely from the thesis on Italy's unconditional surrender and hence cannot give rise to any objections. Still, I consider the information received so far insufficient for judging the steps that the Allies should take in the negotiations with Italy. This circumstance confirms the necessity of Soviet participation in reaching a decision in the course of the negotiations. I consider it timely, therefore, to set up the militarypolitical commission representing the three countries, of which I wrote to you on August 22.

August 24, 1943