335. Letter 23 from McConaughy to Johnson1
This will be a short note, mainly to submit a few factual items.
Indian Ambassador Mehta saw Mr. Robertson on October 27 to discuss certain phases of the Indian Embassy’s function under the Agreed Announcement. A memorandum of the conversation is enclosed. The Indians are inclined to bring up various hair-splitting points although fundamentally they are obviously satisfied that all Chinese in this country are free to return to the Mainland if they wish to do so. Mehta seemed worried by what he termed evidence of fear on the part of several Chinese who have made preliminary inquiries, mostly by telephone, of the Indian Embassy here and the Indian Consulate General in New York. He seems to think they fear a certain intimidation of some sort, as if they think they will be penalized in some way if their interest to return to the Mainland should be [Facsimile Page 2] known. He wants us to find some means of giving reassurance to Chinese who may be deterred by vague fears from contacting the Indian Embassy. We pointed out to Mehta that there is no possible reason for any Chinese fearing any action by the U.S. Government if he should express a wish to return to the Mainland. We do not know of any further action which we could take to make their complete freedom to depart more explicit. Mehta also brought up the question of Chinese who are dual nationals. He wanted to know if Chinese with a valid claim to both American and Chinese citizenship are covered. He also inquired about native American wives and minor children of Chinese who wished to return and take their families with them. These questions seemed to be largely hypothetical at this stage.
Hubert Graves on yesterday brought in O’Neill’s message of October 31 reporting the receipt of a letter from Downey. We see no reason why O’Neill should not play this straight and seek to interview Downey immediately. We are informing the British Embassy to this effect today. We are also replying to numbered paragraph 3 of O’Neill’s comments on the release of Mills and Proulx, which we received from the British Embassy on October 28. (We sent you this document as an enclosure to my last letter.) Our reply will recommend that O’Neill proceed to dispatch immediately an identical letter to each prisoner. This letter will reiterate the terms of the Agreed Announcement, and confirm the readiness of the British Embassy in Peking to contact the addressee. We [Typeset Page 463] will give O’Neill a certain amount of latitude in [Facsimile Page 3] drafting the letter so as to enable him to get around the objection that any repetition of the Agreed Announcement would seem to indicate a lack of confidence in the assurances that Chou En-lai personally gave to O’Neill that each American had been notified. We do not know what O’Neill meant by saying that “I do not think the Chinese will allow me to act until they have confirmation that Indians in United States will receive reciprocal rights”. We are asking for clarification of this.
Chon En-lai’s conversation with O’Neill of October 29 is undoubtedly of considerable significance. We take it as signifying that the PRC is likely to increase the pressure for a higher level conference and that our difficulties in indefinitely maintaining the conversations at the present level will increase.
You will be interested to know that Joe Alsop remarked to me on yesterday that our tactic of dragging out the talks, and our motivation for doing so, were transparently clear to him. He said that Krishna Menon had revealed in a recent conversation with him that he (Menon) also saw this clearly. Naturally Alsop thinks the Chinese Communists see this with increasing clearness, and are likely to manifest growing impatience.
I hope you get some conclusive word from the Secretary on our guidance for your next meeting in time for you to map out your campaign without undue haste. His visit to Madrid probably complicated matters somewhat for you. I suppose there is not now much chance of [Facsimile Page 4] submitting our draft on renunciation of force at the next meeting, but we would hope that it could be done on November 10 at the latest.
Our people are working actively with Colonel Monroe of Defense on assembling the information on the best cases among the 450. It is slow and frustrating business.
Do you have in your files a copy of the DRF Intelligence Report No. 6858 of March 22, 1955, entitled “Chinese Communist Views on Taiwan”?2 This is useful background historical material. We will send you a copy at once if you do not already have it. This study shows that back in the 30’s the Chinese Communists pretty consistently took the stand that Taiwan should be independent and was not a part of China.
Regards and good fortune to you,
Enclosure