493.919/10–753
Memorandum by the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs (Kalijarvi) to the Secretary of State1
Subject:
- The Indian Thorium Nitrate Matter
Attached for your approval is a telegram to New Delhi instructing the Embassy to open up negotiations for the purchase of the Indians’ future thorium nitrate production. (Tab A)2 You will recall that the Department had previously intended to defer the negotiations of this contract until other issues had been settled, that is, whether it would be necessary to terminate aid to India because of the previous shipment of thorium nitrate, and whether the Indians could give us adequate general assurances with respect to the future shipment of strategic goods. We understand, on the basis of the attached memorandum of your conversation with Mr. Stassen (Tab B),3 that he would prefer [Page 1727] that the contract relating to the future output of thorium nitrate be negotiated before these larger issues are finally settled. The attached telegram, in effect, instructs our Embassy in New Delhi to proceed along the lines which Mr. Stassen appears to have indicated to you.
- This memorandum was drafted by Raymond Vernon, Deputy Director of the Office of Economic Defense and Trade Policy.↩
- Not printed; this draft became Department telegram 388 to New Delhi, Oct. 8 (493.919/9–353).↩
- Not printed; according to Secretary Dulles’ memorandum of conversation with Stassen, dated Oct. 5, Stassen indicated he wanted a contract covering the future output of Indian thorium nitrate. He did “not think that India should be obligated to accept the Battle Act.” (493.919/10–753)↩