Office of the Historian

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

London, July 31, 1957—9 p.m.

Dulte 7. Eyes Only Acting Secretary for President from Secretary.

Dear Mr. President:

We have had on the whole a pretty good day. The formulation I worked out last night about inspection zones was accepted by the British and the French and the Canadian Ambassador ad referendum.2 We have sent a copy of it to Adenauer with a personal message from me which you may get through the Department.3 We are hoping we will be in shape to move ahead at least by Friday.4

The French with British support have raised some objections to certain other features of our program about “traffic in arms”, “military movements—across boundary lines and in international waters” etc. These are not essentials and I think we can probably give in on them as I believe the objections are from the British-French viewpoint quite valid.

I gave a luncheon today for the other four delegations and had a most interesting talk with Zorin. I shall try tomorrow to prepare a memorandum of the conversation which is I think of sufficient interest [Page 675] to bring to your attention.5 At the moment I merely say he asked pointblank and categorically whether we would separate suspension of testing from the other provisions. I gave him a categorical “no”. I elaborated by saying that the only justification for suspending testing was that the likelihood of war was diminished. If we cannot diminish the likelihood of war then it is better to go on testing so that the weapons will be more adaptable to purely military purposes and less weapons of vast massive destruction. Zorin made no comment but was obviously under instructions to put this question and get the answer.

Jock and I are leaving now for a private dinner with Macmillan and Lloyd.

Unless there are unexpected obstacles I think I should get away from here by Friday.

Faithfully yours, Foster.

Whitney6
  1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 330.13/7–3157. Secret; Eyes Only.↩
  2. Reference is to the paper cited in footnote 2, Supra.↩
  3. See Supra.↩
  4. August 2.↩
  5. No memorandum of this conversation has been found in Department of State files, but see infra.↩
  6. Dulte is a series indicator for personal telegrams from Secretary Dulles and usually bear his signature.↩