Office of the Historian

296. Memorandum From the Secretary of State to the President1

Washington, July 12, 1955.

I have sent you my cable to Macmillan with reference to a communication to Chou En-lai,2 designed to carry out that portion of your letter to Prime Minister Nehru3 which speaks of designating an ambassador to carry on the talks at Geneva with the Chinese Communist régime.

I gather that both Nehru and Macmillan have misinterpreted this statement as indicating that the Chinese Communists know that we were not prepared to discuss other topics unless and until the question of exchange of citizens was satisfactorily worked out. That had never been my intent, nor I think yours, and I think the text of the suggested message to Chou En-lai contained in my cable to Macmillan makes this clear.

I am suggesting that you might want to make a reply to Nehru along the lines of the attached.4

[Page 647]

I have just heard from Macmillan5 that he is in complete agreement with the text of the proposed oral communication to be delivered to Chou En-lai.

JFD
  1. Source: Eisenhower Library, Whitman File, Dulles–Herter Series. Top Secret.↩
  2. Document 293.↩
  3. Transmitted in Document 289.↩
  4. The attachment, not printed, was a draft of the message to Nehru transmitted in telegram 80, infra.↩
  5. See telegram 133, supra.↩