27. Memorandum of Conversation0
SUBJECT
- Disarmament
PARTICIPANTS
- The President
- The Secretary of State
- Ambassador Adlai E. Stevenson
- Assistant Secretary Harlan Cleveland
The following is a summary of consensus and action and not a detailed record of a meeting which lasted about an hour and a half, covering several subjects.
In a review of next steps on the disarmament negotiations, the following points were highlighted:
- a.
- The agreed date is June 19th. The Secretary said that the Russians had originally proposed June 5, but when the date of the 19th was mentioned the Soviet instructions evidently were made in agreement on the latter date, since the Soviet negotiator accepted June 19th on the spot. The chief Soviet delegate for these talks will evidently be Valerian Zorin, Soviet Ambassador to the UN. The U.S. Delegate has not yet been selected.
- b.
- Ambassador Stevenson expressed the view that the bilateral stage of negotiations was at least as important as the later broader negotiations in whatever forum was agreed. The agenda for the bilaterals will be an attempt to agree on the composition of the forum for the later talks beginning in August, and the general “principles” that should guide the disarmament discussions.
Ambassador Stevenson said it should be possible to develop a general objective that met the Soviets’ proposals for “general and complete disarmament” on their own terms and at their own level of generality. The President asked whether we could go for general and complete disarmament with adequate inspection controls; Governor Stevenson thought that agreement about general principles would make it possible then to get on with questions of phasing, first steps, and details. In this connection Governor Stevenson said that the U.S. line at Vienna1 could well be very simple indeed, saying to Khrushchev in effect: We want disarmament as much as you do, quite possibly [Page 80] more than you do; you should not delude yourself that we would have any trouble reallocating to peaceful purposes the resources released in our economy by a real disarmament program; let us get on with it, but with controlled devices that are international and effective, which means of course they cannot have a built-in veto on executive action.
On the question of forum, the President asked whether we could not accept five neutrals. After some discussion, the President reconfirmed the present negotiating position, involving two or three neutrals added to the ten present members of the disarmament negotiating body.
Ambassador Stevenson handed the President a memorandum on the forthcoming discussions with Chairman Khrushchev and President de Gaulle,2 and expressed the opinion that the Soviets may mean business on disarmament. There was some discussion of past history of disarmament negotiations and U.S. positions in that field, some of which Ambassador Stevenson described as mistaken. The President said he felt the need for more information on the history of disarmament negotiations with the Russians, before he meets with Khrushchev in Vienna. There was general agreement that the matter of nuclear test bans, and particularly the administrative control arrangement for a nuclear test ban, should be a major item on the Vienna agenda.
Ambassador Stevenson reported that Zorin had recently called him expressing his readiness to talk about arrangements for discussing outer space.
- Source: Department of State, Central Files, 600.0012/5-2461. Secret. Drafted by Cleveland and approved by Manfull (S/S) on May 25. A typed note reads: “Not cleared by the President or the Secretary.” The meeting was held at the White House. The times are taken from the President’s Appointment Books. (Kennedy Library)↩
- The President met with Chairman Khrushchev for talks in Vienna June 3-4.↩
- Kennedy was in Paris for a State visit to France and a meeting of the North Atlantic Council May 31-June 3.↩