396.1 GE/3–1354: Telegram
The Acting Secretary of State to the Embassy in the Soviet Union1
priority
575. Re Moscow’s 1075 rptd London 153 Paris 212.2 We have also become increasingly aware possibility Soviet reply may attempt to inject “Five Power” facade at outset in arranging for Geneva Conference. Delay in Soviet reply together with our belief Chinese Communists will try to grab at every scrap, symbolic, organizational, and procedural, in arranging Conference would seem to point up this strong possibility.
Embassies London and Paris are requested urgently to discuss situation with FonOffs in light Moscow’s and this message and to request them to instruct their Ambassadors in Moscow to concert with Bohlen on reply along following lines if USSR raises “Five Power” idea:
“Bohlen would receive Soviet communication and state that he would transmit it to US Govt and to his British and French colleagues.
He should state however that he is authorized to say that as far as Three govts are concerned, Korean Political Conference in Geneva could not be convened on any terms differing from those agreed by four Foreign Ministers in Berlin, and Three govts are quite sure there was no misunderstanding of those terms on part of Soviet Union. He would merely observe that Soviet communication suggests basis different from that agreed at Berlin for holding Conference in Geneva, which he felt certain would be unacceptable.”
- Drafted by Galloway of C. Repeated to Paris as telegram 3150 and to London as telegram 4708.↩
- In telegram 1075 from Moscow, Mar. 13, not printed, the Embassy informed the Department that Soviet delay in replying to the proposals for preparation of the conference (p. 28), was probably caused by difficulties encountered with China over the Soviet failure to achieve at Berlin an acceptance of the People’s Republic of China as one of the Big Five. (396.1 GE/3–1354)↩