French plans for the complete detachment of the Ruhr from Germany met with greater resistance. In September 1946 James F. Byrnes, the United States Secretary of State stated in a Stuttgart speech Restatement of Policy on Germany that the United States would accept the French claims on the Saarland, but that: "the United States will not support any encroachment on territory which is indisputably German or any division of Germany which is not genuinely desired by the people concerned. So far as the United States is aware the people of the Ruhr area and the Rhineland desire to remain united with the rest of Germany.