Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, Western European Security, Volume V, Part 1

740.5/4–1852: Telegram

The Ambassador in France (Dunn) to the Department of State ¹

secret

Paris, April 18, 1952—5 p.m.

6385. From MacArthur. During his Apr 16 visit to Brussels, Gen Eisenhower devoted his major effort in convs with Belg Cab members and officials to urgency of speeding up work on EDC treaty, using points from Secy’s msg Deptel 6022 to Paris.² He urged that new issues not be injected into Paris conf this late date, and stressed necessity for signature in early May in his convs with King, PriMin, Def Min, and FonOff officials, saying he understood one of main stumbling blocks was Belg insistence on writing into treaty a specific length of mil service.

Gen Eisenhower urged that Belg not insist on this as a condition for signature. If they did, the length of service in EDC wld most certainly be that of lowest common denominator. He fully agreed EDC must eventually fix an agreed length of mil service but urged that length of service be agreed by EDC council after treaty had entered into effect. Furthermore, Belg might well obtain agreement of EDC conf in Paris that length of service wld be agreed within certain time limit after treaty enters into effect, within a year for example. Even then circumstances might dictate wisdom of providing a temporary exception for few months in case of a particular country if by such an additional period of grace it cld be then brought up to level agreed by other participants.

Gen Eisenhower praised Belg Govt very highly for its leadership in going to 24 months service and said he trusted most earnestly they wld not reduce this period until final agreement had been reached by EDC council at some date following entry into effect of treaty.

Our impression is that Gen Eisenhower made progress but that Belgs are not yet ready to go along in EDC conf with solution to length of service similar to that put forward by Gen Eisenhower. However, we have impression that if agrmt is reached on other EDC questions, Belg will probably not hold out on this.³

Dunn

1. Repeated to Brussels, The Hague, Rome, London, and Luxembourg.
2. Dated Apr. 11, p. 639.
3. In telegram 6419 from Paris of Apr. 19, Dunn reported that in opening the EDC Steering Committee session the previous day, Alphand had stressed the urgency of the situation in which the conference now found itself, and stated that it was the duty of the conference to push forward to an early conclusion of its work. At Alphand’s suggestion, it was agreed that a deadline of May 3 should be established, and that if by that date the treaty was completed but supplementary documents were not, the conference could forward the treaty to the various governments and complete such other documents in the two weeks that would elapse between May 3 and the final Ministers meeting. It was also agreed that the deadline date should not be made public. Alphand then laid before the conference the French proposal on territorial applicability of the EDC Treaty, the principle of which was to restrict the treaty’s territorial applicability while (1) taking account of the possible need to station EDC troops or build EDC installations elsewhere than within the EDC territory and (2) to permit member states to recruit men for their EDC contingents from non-European territories under their jurisdiction. The proposal was referred to appropriate committees for early consideration. The Steering Committee then adopted the definitive text of the protocol defining EDC–NATO relations, and commenced an article-by-article review of the treaty draft, accepting without modification a number of articles and approving modification or new texts of several others. (740.5/4–1952)