308. Letter 21 from McConaughy to Johnson1
The Secretary is due to arrive in Geneva on Wednesday afternoon, October 26. I have just talked to Rod O’Connor for the second time regarding contacts with you. We think the arrangement for the handling of your instructions during the Foreign Ministers Conference should work all right. The regular instructions to you will continue to be handled in the Department, but will be repeated to the Secretary in the TEDUL series. We will take particular pains to get these instructions out on the Tuesday before the Thursday meetings, so there will be time for the Secretary to amend or comment on the instructions if he wishes to do so. [Typeset Page 432] It would be well for you to give the Secretary’s staff in Geneva a copy of all your messages to the Department simultaneously with the dispatch of the messages. This in addition to the arrangement for you to inform us of any instructions you receive direct from the Secretary should give us a [Facsimile Page 2] pretty complete cross-check. In addition, there may be some direct exchanges between the Secretary and/or Herman Phleger in Geneva and the Department on policy considerations involved in your instructions. There will always be a risk of some confusion or misunderstanding in a situation like this but we hope that this arrangement will give us maximum insurance against any serious crossing of the wires.
Ralph Clough has had Joe Nagoski prepare an up-to-date box score on the status of the 76 Chinese in this country who were mentioned to Wang. It is enclosed as of possible background use to you.
The mild and cautious tone of the Secretary’s remarks about the Geneva talks at his Press Conference on October 18 has created an impression in some quarters that we are not particularly dissatisfied with the PRC’s record of implementation of the Agreed Announcement, and that a Foreign Ministers’ level meeting might be seriously considered immediately after your talks are terminated. Senator Knowland telephoned from California on October 19 to express his surprise over the press reports on the Secretary’s remarks and to go on record as being opposed to any discussions under Item 2 “until the 19 Americans rotting in Communist jails have been released”. He thought we had abandoned our firm position. Mr. Robertson explained that we had not abandoned Item 1 and would not do so until the last civilian was released. He also pointed out that the only substantive discussion under Item 2 concerned the renunciation of force, which was our [Facsimile Page 3] topic. The discussion of this topic was in our interest and in no way indicated a weakening of our position or a concession to the Communist viewpoint.
We are doing what we can to counter any impression abroad that we are satisfied with Chinese Communist performance under the Agreed Announcement, that we are about ready for a Dulles-Chou En-lai meeting, or that our stand on the recognition issue has changed.
We are sending you a memorandum of the latest conversation between Ambassador Koo and Mr. Robertson on this subject which took place October 20.
The British Embassy here is giving us somewhat fuller abstracts of O’Neill’s reports than the Foreign Office in London is giving to our Embassy there. There is some duplication involved since you are receiving this material both from London and from us. We would like to have an indication from you as to whether the somewhat greater detail you get in our telegrams justifies the added expense.
We are awaiting your reaction to the short and simple draft declaration on renunciation of force. It may not be the best form of statement [Typeset Page 433] to propose to Wang but it is a starter anyway. We want to avoid high-flown language suggestive of a treaty. So it will have to be short and simple. We feel we must get in a specific inclusion of the area of Taiwan without diluting the force of the general statement. This creates something of a dilemma for us. The introduction of the “collective” reference is an added complication.
[Facsimile Page 4]The report of the 22nd meeting yesterday indicates that you are just about on the merry-go-round in the discussion of the renunciation of the use of force. There is a need for introduction of new material to avoid repetition ad nauseam of the hackneyed phrases. It seems to me we must rebut in some way the Communist canard that we are in military occupation of Taiwan. How to do this without getting side-tracked, and without being led into matters dealing with the rights and essential interests of the GRC, is a poser.
A good sojourn in Prague, and I hope that you won’t mind being deprived of the limelight during the Foreign Ministers Conference.
Regards,
Enclosure:
Status of 76 Chinese
- Source: Department of State, Geneva Talks Files, Lot 72D415. Secret; Official–Informal.↩