Department of State Atomic Energy Files
Record of a Meeting Between United States and United Kingdom Representatives at the Foreign Office, London, June 16, 1947, 5 p.m.
After the usual pleasantries, Mr. Gallman and I sat down with Roger Makins and Dennis Rickett1 to discuss the matter at hand. Mr. Gallman explained that I had come over at the Ambassador’s request, and to be available to the British for any assistance they might want in getting a full understanding of U.S. views on current negotiations. At the outset I made it clear that we would be concerned only with current negotiations and not with the larger issues of the U.S.–U.K. relations in the field of atomic energy.
[Page 511]At Mr. Makins’ suggestion, I gave a rather full exposition of the course of negotiations to date, and of the views of the U.S. on effective control. He was particularly anxious to know what status the papers of the working groups had. I explained that, in a formal sense, no government is committed to any one of them. The U.S. had been anxious to have these papers prepared as quickly as possible in order to give time to the various delegations to send them home to their governments for consideration. Nevertheless, as far as the U.S. was concerned, these papers reflected quite accurately our views and any major change of principle or substance could not be accepted. I said that any government which wished to could, of course, lean heavily on the fiction that their representatives were speaking only for themselves, but that this should be recognized to be, in reality, a fiction. As far as we were concerned, we considered that our representatives in the working groups were reflecting not only their personal opinion, but the views of the delegation and our government as well.
I outlined the procedure whereby these four papers,2 as well as the preamble, and probably the next paper on rights and limitations would be considered in Committee Two. First, a general discussion of basic principles. Second, a review of the papers in terms of their precise meaning and intent. Third, consideration of formal written amendments thereto. As to time scale, I said that governments should probably be able to express their official positions within the next few weeks. It seemed to us, therefore, it was extremely important that the Foreign Office should understand quite clearly the convictions and views of the U.S. before that time arrived.
All this seemed of great interest to Mr. Makins, who apparently was under the impression that the working groups were general debating societies in which no one was expressing any serious view. If Makins really meant what he said, which I doubt, to the U.K. should go the prize for sheer irresponsibility on the part of government representatives. I did not express this view to Makins, but made it clear that as far as the U.S. was concerned, we took these working groups very seriously and saw to it that our representatives sitting in on them took them seriously and were reflecting the views of the U.S.
I took up a general analysis of the four papers, beginning with research and development. As a prelude to this, I said that we had received very fine cooperation from most of the other delegations, particularly the Canadians, the French, the Chinese, and the Belgians. As far as the U.K. was concerned, it was only recently that we received any inkling that there was any serious difference between us. This was heralded by the return of Sir George Thomson, who immediately leaped into the discussion with both feet to upset the general [Page 512] agreement that had been worked out cooperatively among the several delegations in his absence.
I indicated that the principle point of substance in the research and development paper was the question as to whether nations should be permitted to carry on research and development activities involving dangerous quantities of nuclear fuel, source materials, or facilities using, or capable of producing, such quantities. I stressed that the U.S. position on this point had been arrived at after the most careful consideration, and that the position reflected in this paper had the fullest concurrence of such American scientists as Dr. Oppenheimer, Dr. Bacher and Dr. Conant. I observed that the opposing view to the effect that nations should be permitted such research under “appropriate safeguards” was reflected in the alternate paragraph written by the Pole, Professor Zlotowski.3 I pointed out that specific proposal number four, dealing with the manner in which the agency would take over research and development activities in case they grew to the point of requiring dangerous quantities had been drafted after close consultation with Sir Charles and with the view to taking into account legitimate British interests, as well as those of other nations in the field of research and development.
In discussing the location and mining of ores paper, I stressed that the chairman of that group had been General McNaughton.4 He came to the discussion with grave doubts about the need of ownership of source material, but as the discussion proceeded he became completely convinced that ownership was the only feasible way in which to insure effective control. In applying his principle criterion of security, he found that ownership was inescapable.
We passed over the paper on processing and purification rather rapidly. I explained that there could be little question in anybody’s mind of the need for management, operation and ownership by the agency of isotope separation plants, primary reactors, and chemical extraction plants. This being so, we saw no reason to leave a gap in the chain of processes.
Coming to the fourth paper, I stressed the decision that had been reached by the working group to the effect that the primary consideration should be security and that peaceful exploitation of atomic energy would have to be considered in terms of that over-riding consideration. I stated that one of the strongest proponents of this view was Mr. de Rose of the French Delegation, and that this view secured the unanimous support of the working group. On the basis of this paper, I expounded the thesis that it seemed to us that by giving to the agency [Page 513] positive powers of development the progress of atomic energy utilization for power purposes would be moved along more rapidly than under national auspices. Furthermore, under agency control, this could be done with far greater safety to the world; if this matter were left in national hands there would be the keenest competition and the greatest national rivalries for source materials, and a race to see which nation could secure power-plants first, each plant, of course, being an extreme military hazard to other nations.
We discussed briefly the question of the rights and limitations on the agency and its personnel. I stressed that a clear distinction should be made between the grant of powers to the agency in matters of inspection and rights of access and the actual exercise by the agency of those powers. In our view the powers should be very broad, but the actual exercise of them should be carried on under carefully prescribed procedures for judicial review and full cognizance of domestic law. To the extent that the agency has under its own control all dangerous quantities of source materials and nuclear fuel and owns, manages, and operates all dangerous facilities, the problem of diversion is greatly reduced, and the problem of detecting clandestine operations as well. This situation would impel a malevolent nation to seize agency facilities if it were trying to wage atomic war. Seizure would obviously be an overt act and would be evident to all. Attempts at diversion and clandestine operation, on the other hand, might very well go undetected and would impose the gravest problems for world security. By having under its own control these dangerous operations, the agency would be able to reduce to measurable proportions the job of inspection. In the circumstances it could afford to take more time in following through on established judicial procedures.
Touching upon the problems of organization and staffing, I suggested that, while we had not jelled our views on this subject, certainly one of the things which would have to be considered would be the establishment of a special court, an “Atomic Energy Court”, which would have power of review over many of the decisions and actions of the agency, and also have power to grant warrants on the application of the agency in the event that domestic courts prove unwilling to grant them. I suggested that we had thought about several different ways in which the governing body might be established, and its voting procedure set up. We had been thinking about a body of eleven members, representing in all cases the Big Five and non-permanent members of the Security Council on a rotating basis. As to voting procedure, two fairly clear alternatives might be suggested. One would be that the agency itself would make final policy decisions within the framework of treaty provisions on a majority basis on day-to-day matters, with provision for an extraordinary majority of two-thirds [Page 514] or three-fourths in the case of important policy decisions, such as the location of power plants, allocation of source materials, and the distribution of nuclear fuel. The other possibility would be to provide for a simple majority vote on all matters with provision for Security Council review of decisions taken on important questions. Here the idea would be that the Security Council would override a decision of the agency only by a vote of seven with all the permanent members concurring. Failure to over-ride would mean that the original agency decision would stand.
I indicated that we did not expect that the other items on the list of topics would be elaborated in as much detail as the first four papers had been. This was largely the result of lack of time. Makins wanted to know what the second report to the Security Council would look like. I said that it would contain as its nucleus the four papers, plus the fifth one on rights and limitations, all introduced by the preamble, a copy of the first draft of which, prepared by Mr. de Rose, I gave him. In addition, the report would contain a section on organization and staffing in some detail and the rest of the topics would probably not be spelled out very elaborately.
On the question of geographical distribution and stockpiling, Mr. Rickett raised the question as to what we proposed to do with existing stocks of nuclear fuel. I stated that no decision had been reached on this question, that it was obviously a most difficult one and would certainly have to be answered. I pointed out that the possibilities ranged from on the one hand, distributing nuclear fuel strategically around the world as a counter-balance to the location of mines and present dangerous facilities, to on the other, dumping it all in the ocean. I said that within those two extremes there would appear to be infinite possibilities. We did not discuss this point further.
The one significant statement made by Mr. Makins, in addition to his general impression that these working papers were not very definitive, was that the British had been hoping that some middle ground could be found between the obviously inadequate solution proposed by the Soviets, and the “perfectionist” approach taken by the U.S. The British hoped that by a gradual process the two positions could be brought together. They seemed to feel that the only hope for solution lay in agreeing to a less radical approach. On hearing this, I stated that on the basis of the summary Thomson prepared which we had seen of the alleged British alternate plan, our delegation considered the alternate hopelessly inadequate. I said I could not speak for the Soviet Union, perhaps they would be willing to accept it, but that I was completely certain that the U.S. would not under any circumstances agree to it. I stated very clearly that as far as we were concerned, we would much rather have no treaty at all than one which [Page 515] purported to be effective but which in reality was not. I said that the temper of our delegation—and I felt that it was fully supported by the State Department and by our Congress—was that only a fully effective system could be taken seriously, and that if no other delegation wished to vote with us, we would be obliged to, and would be prepared to, and would undertake to, stand alone. I remarked that these negotiations were not quite like customary negotiations in which country A comes in maintaining that two and two make four, and country B comes in maintaining that two and two make five and that somehow everyone is perfectly pleased when the conclusion reached is that two and two make four and one-half. Unless it was agreed that two and two made four, we would not be interested. This problem was not a problem of negotiating where the boundary line of Trieste should be drawn, or some such similar problem of little consequence. I said that perhaps the difficulty here was that the American proposals, which have now gained considerable support, reflect too much idealism for a cynical world to accept and yet that it seemed to us that this problem could be solved in realistic terms, only through the application of unaccustomed ways of thinking. Unless the world were to continue endlessly breeding on national rivalries, culminating in war after war, we would do well to seize upon this problem as the one hope of breaching the wall and moving into a new phase of international relations that would hold some promise for world security.
To all this lecturing, Mr. Makins had very little to say. He suggested that he and Mr. Bickett would like to think over the points I had made, and hoped to talk further with us today. We are now awaiting a call from him.
- Adviser, British Delegation to the Atomic Energy Commission.↩
- AEC/C.2/36, 37, 38, 39, not printed.↩
- Prof. Ignacy Zlotowski of the Polish Delegation to the Atomic Energy Commission.↩
- Gen. Andrew G. L. McNaughton, Canadian Representative on the Atomic Energy Commission; Chairman of the Canadian Atomic Energy Control Board.↩