Office of the Historian

396.1 GE/7–1654: Telegram

Bonsal–Offroy Meeting, Geneva, July 15: The United States Delegation to the Department of State

secret
priority
Geneva, July 16, 1954—1 p.m.

Secto 620. Repeated information Paris 68, Saigon 40. Offroy of French delegation yesterday expressed following views to Bonsal [Page 1388] regarding status of discussions on international controls of agreements for cessation of hostilities in Vietnam (Secto 5751) and in Cambodia and Laos (Secto 6052). He stated following four major questions remained pending with Communists:

1.
Compositions: Communists insist on inclusion Communist member. Further discussions will have to take place at ministerial level following General Smith‘s arrival.
2.
Freedom of action of international inspection teams: Soviets contend that complete freedom of action for these teams would infringe on sovereignty of states concerned.
3.
Rules of procedure and mandatory character of decisions of International Commission: Soviets continue to insist on unanimity rule in event of major violations and on recommendatory rather than mandatory character of Commission’s decisions and recommendations.
4.
Organization: Soviets want one main commission with sub-commissions for Laos and Cambodia. Our side conceives of three commissions with similar composition plus coordinating mechanism.

Offroy envisages meeting at early date of friendly delegations to express views on draft texts already submitted by French. This would be followed very shortly by discussion with other side on restricted basis. Offroy envisages not more than three or four powers taking part in this discussion aimed at securing definition of agreed and disagreed items.

To date, French have distributed papers on controls (Sectos 575 and 605) to all nine delegations; draft declaration for conference (Secto 5973) also to all nine (Soviet counterproposal contained Secto 6154 has been distributed to all delegations); administrative human rights provision of cessation of hostilities agreements to six friendly delegations and draft military clauses of these agreements distributed probably only to US.

Johnson
  1. Dated July 8, p. 1305.↩
  2. Dated July 14, p. 1369.↩
  3. Dated July 13, p. 1355.↩
  4. Dated July 15, p. 1384.↩