330.13/6–553
The United States Representative at the United Nations (Lodge) to the Secretary of State
Dear Foster: This acknowledges yours of June 4 concerning the Disarmament Commission.1
Your letter is dated on the day that I had my conference with you, and the fact that you did not mention the subject to me at the time, led me to believe that you agreed with my telegram No. 757 of June 3.2
In this telegram I opposed taking the initiative in reconvening the Disarmament Commission at present, because of my belief that the Soviets could put us in an extremely embarrassing situation by challenging us to adopt the Baruch Plan for International Inspection of Atomic Facilities. This, of course, is something which would [Page 1177] be totally unacceptable to the Senate, and which we probably would not even want to present to the Senate.
I thoroughly agree with what you say in your letter about it being “neither possible nor desirable to avoid U.N. discussion of Disarmament”, and I would not want to do so. In fact, if any other nation raises the question I would of course want to take part in the most effective way.
But I do wonder about the political cleverness of taking the initiative on disarmament in order to “exploit the weakness of the Soviet disarmament position” when they can keep us on the end of the harpoon concerning our own willingness to accept inspection of atomic facilities.
For this reason, I am rather inclined to doubt the advisability of initiating discussions on this question with our friendly colleagues on the Disarmament Commission.
Sincerely yours,