Office of the Historian

175. Message From Prime Minister Macmillan to President Kennedy0

London, April 17, 1962.

Dear Friend, Mr. Khrushchev has at last given a definite, if somewhat prolix, reply to my simple question on international verification.1

Now we have the problem of the eight well meaning neutrals.2 I understand that after further discussion this morning it was agreed that the neutrals should clarify their proposals at a meeting on Thursday morning, April 19.3 On the assumption that these remain substantially unchanged, I suggest that Dean and Godber should take this line. After referring to other difficulties, for instance that the right to initiate a verification in the neutrals’ original proposal seems to lie not with the complainant nation but with the commission or even with the nation complained of; i.e. not the plaintiff but the court or even the defendant, they should say that there is still the vital point of Russian objection to any form of inspection on Russian soil. This point was made quite clear by the President and the Prime Minister in their joint statement and by the Prime Minister in his letter to Mr. Khrushchev who has turned it down flat. They should repeat that if the Russians will now, even at this late hour, accept the principle of international verification, negotiation becomes possible. If not, it cannot for the moment be fruitful. Therefore the tests must proceed.

[Page 439]

One of my difficulties is that the House of Commons rises at 4 p.m. on April 19. My normal time for a statement would be at 12 noon that day. If this is the agreed line for Dean and Godber to take I could confine my statement to giving it to the House.

My reading of the situation is that the Russians are determined to have their own series of tests and are relying on yours as the excuse. Therefore I think it very unlikely that they will accept this principle which obviously must have the effect of, at any rate, postponing both your tests and theirs.

With warm regard,

Harold Macmillan4
  1. Source: Department of State, Presidential Correspondence: Lot 66 D 204. Secret. Attached to the source text is a note from Ormsby Gore to the President, April 17, explaining that the Prime Minister asked him “to pass to you the enclosed message on the neutrals’ proposals at Geneva on nuclear tests.”↩
  2. For text of Khrushchev’s message to Macmillan, April 12 (U.N. doc. ENDC/27), see Documents on Disarmament, 1962, vol. I, pp. 318-328. Regarding Macmillan’s letter to Khrushchev, to which Khrushchev replied, see Document 170.↩
  3. Reference is to the eight-nation memorandum on the cessation of nuclear weapons tests submitted by Brazil, Burma, Ethiopia, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Sweden, and the United Arab Republic to the Eighteen-Nation Disarmament Committee (U.N. doc. ENDC/28) on April 16. For text, see Documents on Disarmament, 1962, vol. I, pp. 334-336.↩
  4. For text of the statement by Acting Ethiopian Representative Petros Sahlu, who spoke on behalf of the eight delegations before the Eighteen-Nation Disarmament Committee on April 19, see ibid., pp. 394-395.23↩
  5. Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩