Office of the Historian

239. Telegram From the Secretary of State to the Department of State1

Geneva, July 23, 1955—9 a.m.

Dulte 31. Eyes only Acting Secretary from Secretary. I dictated this en route to 10:30 p.m. meeting July 22 of Foreign Ministers.2 During the morning, we made fairly good progress in agreeing on terms of reference to October meeting Foreign Ministers in relation to unification of Germany and European security.3 However, Soviets held out on two points: namely, (1) European security must be given priority over German unification and (2) there must be instructions to have participation by Federal Republic of Germany and German Democratic Republic.

We are resisting both propositions either of which would be very bad for Adenauer.

We then took up subject of disarmament and made very little progress—the Soviets (1) insisting on acceptance of principle of total prohibition of atomic weapons, (2) refusing our proposal that the UN subcommittee on disarmament should give priority or special urgency to methods of inspection and (3) insisting that the Heads of Government mandate should run not to UN representatives but to the Foreign Ministers. (The apparent purpose of this was to give the Foreign [Page 485] Ministers another task which would preoccupy them and prevent consideration of German unification and also to hamper our dealing with our UN disarmament representatives except through proven machinery.)

It is normal that we should have a crisis at this stage of such a conference, and I believe that if we hold firm, we shall in the end get most of what we want, although probably not a direct priority for inspection as this involves a substantive decision of major significance which we could hardly hold out for at a conference not designed to take substantive decisions.

All the foregoing were matters dealt with by Foreign Ministers with a brief interlude for the Heads of Government to discuss the fourth item on the agenda, namely, better communications between East and West. Here, after statements by the President and Premier Faure, the other two agreed to submit their statements for the record without reading them so as to give more time to the Foreign Ministers.4

P.S. The 10:30 meeting merely confirmed the differences and identified them for reference to Heads of Government Saturday.

Dulles
  1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 396.1–GE/7–2355. Secret; Priority.↩
  2. See infra.↩
  3. See Document 232.↩
  4. See supra.↩