Office of the Historian

600.0012/3–1054

Memorandum of Conversation, by the Acting Director in Charge of USSR Affairs (Stoessel)

secret
[Washington,] March 10, 1954.
  • Subject:
  • Discussions with Soviet Union Regarding President Eisenhower’s Atomic Energy Proposals
[Page 1369]
  • Participants:
  • Ambassador Georgi Zaroubin
  • Mr. M. N. Smirnovsky, First Secretary, Soviet Embassy
  • The Acting Secretary
  • Mr. Walter J. Stoessel, Jr., EE
  • Mr. Alexander Logofet, TC (translator)

Ambassador Zaroubin called at 12:00 noon today at his request. After reviewing the discussion at Berlin between the Secretary and Mr. Molotov regarding the question of which countries should participate at a later stage in the negotiations on the atomic energy proposals, Ambassador Zaroubin read a memorandum setting forth the views of Mr. Molotov in this connection. The Ambassador left with the Acting Secretary the Russian-language text of this memorandum, together with an unofficial translation thereof. A translation prepared in the Department is attached.1

The memorandum expresses the agreement of the Soviet Government to negotiate with the United States Government on a bilateral basis, leaving open the possibility of re-examination of the question of the participation of other countries. The memorandum notes that the opinion of the Soviet Government regarding the possible participation of Communist China in the negotiations was set forth in the Soviet aide-mémoire of February 13.2

The Acting Secretary thanked the Ambassador for this expression of the views of the Soviet Government. He said they would be conveyed to the Secretary upon his return to Washington3 and that, in the light of the importance attached to this subject by the Secretary, he would probably wish to arrange another meeting between the Ambassador and himself in the next near future.

The Acting Secretary noted his personal view that it was advisable to keep the discussions on a bilateral basis for the present, since he had observed that whenever progress had been made in negotiations between the United States and the USSR it had usually been as a result of bilateral talks. The Ambassador agreed, saying that there would be no point in bringing five or six countries into the discussions if agreement had not first been reached between the United States and the USSR.

  1. The attachment is not printed. For the translation of the Russian memorandum, see Department of State Bulletin, Oct. 4, 1954, p. 480.↩
  2. For text, see ibid., p. 479.↩
  3. Dulles was at Caracas to attend the Tenth Inter-American Conference, documentation on which is in vol. iv, pp. 264 ff.↩