Office of the Historian

396.1–GE/3–1854

The Embassy in the Soviet Union to the Soviet Foreign Ministry1

[Moscow, March 5, 1954.]

The following are the views of my government with regard to certain matters preliminary to the convening on April 26, 1954 of the political conference in Geneva, Switzerland. These have been discussed with the Governments of the United Kingdom and France and they have expressed their complete accord with these proposals.

It appears that the only conference rooms in Geneva which are adequate for the holding of the meetings are those in the Palais des Nations. While important international agency meetings are now scheduled to be held in that building during the period in which the political conference would meet, it is considered possible to have them postponed or transferred to other sites in the event negotiations are begun promptly with the responsible officials of the United Nations.

The simplest method would be to use United Nations Secretariat personnel to provide interpretation, documentation and translation services, and to use all other available facilities of the United Nations. While the United Nations Secretariat personnel would perform common conference services, they would not have access to confidential materials or operations of the individual sides or delegations. The costs of the common conference services would need be met by the participating states, and the exact method of sharing these costs could be determined prior to the opening of the conference.

It is therefore, suggested that the United Nations delegations of the four powers jointly approach the Secretary General of the United Nations in order to enlist his cooperation in the initiation of the necessary preparations. Since the United Nations Secretariat should be given sufficient time to make the necessary physical arrangements and to prepare an adequate conference staff, it is hoped that you will be able to give a prompt reply.

  1. The source text is that transmitted to the Department of State in telegram 1088, Mar. 18, from Moscow, wherein Ambassador Bohlen stated that he handed it in the form of an aide-mémoire to Soviet Deputy Minister Kuznetsov on Mar. 5.↩