Although Bulgaria had withdrawn their troops from Greece in order to get an armistice in Oct 1944, Bulgaria reiterated their demand for Western Thrace (that its troops had vacated in '44) at the Paris conference, in the form of a clear amendment that would have set the Greek-Bulgarian border to that of Treaty of Bucharest (1913), which had given Bulgaria a sizeable beach real estate on the Aegean.
The return to Bulgaria of Western Thrace would remove a grave injustice committed against the Bulgarian people. This solution would, at the same time, create favourable conditions by which not [Page 241]only Bulgaria but neighbouring countries would profit and would help in the establishment of true and lasting collaboration among Balkan peoples.
The Bulgarian delegation therefore proposes that Article 1 of the draft Peace Treaty with Bulgaria be amended and worded as follows:
“The frontiers of Bulgaria, as shown on the map attached to the present Treaty (Annex 1) shall be the same as existed on 1st January 1941, with the exception of the Greco-Bulgarian frontier which shall be the same as was established by the Treaty of Bucharest of 10th August 1913.”
Conversely, at the Paris conference, Greece also made territorial demands over the pre-1941 border with Bulgaria, the so-called 'strategic frontier' that was supposed to run through mountains to prevent another Bulgarian attack. The latter/Greek demand was rejected by vote:
On 3 October 1946 the Greek proposal for a new ‘strategic frontier’ was rejected by eight votes (Australia, Belarus, Czechoslovakia, France, the Soviet Union, Ukraine, the United States and Yugoslavia) to two (Greece and South Africa) with three abstentions (Britain, New Zealand and India).
Was there a separate vote on the Bulgarian demand for Western Thrace at the Paris conference of 1946? If so, what was the recoded position of each participant country in the latter vote?
FWTW, I was able to find that there was a lot of haggling on the procedure for these votes and then in the subsequent speeches on September 9, the Western allies lambasted the Bulgarian request, while the Soviet-aligned countries gave it a measure of verbal support. So, I suspect this one went like many other votes in that conference, split along Cold War lines. Still, I'm interested if there was an actual vote on this Bulgarian amendment (even if such votes were ultimately just consultative for the final drafters--The Council of Foreign Ministers which met again in November, after the conference.) OTOH, on September 9, the UK representative "Mr. Warner" said he
understood that no delegation had actually sponsored the Bulgarian amendment as such and accordingly hoped that it could be disposed of without further discussion.
So, still, was there a formal vote on it, as perfunctory as that might have been?
Furthermore, it appears that the matter may have been dropped at one point during the conference, but then possibly brought up again (as Cavendish W. Cannon of the US delegation noted in a memorandum on Oct 16):
They [the Greeks] seem not to worry about the probability that the Bulgarians, who had been told by the Russians to drop their counter-claim, will now reopen the question, and they show no sign of making any provision for a second defeat when the CFM draws up the final text.
So, was there ultimately no formal vote on the Bulgarian amendment, in any shape or form?
