145. Memorandum of a Conversation, Department of State, Washington, May 14, 19561

SUBJECT

  • Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission

PARTICIPANTS

  • Ambassador Boheman, Embassy of Sweden
  • Mr. Robertson, Assistant Secretary
  • Mr. Hemmendinger, Acting Director, Northeast Asian Affairs
  • Mr. Crowley, BNA

Ambassador Boheman, who came in at his suggestion, said that he had just returned from Stockholm. He had been startled upon arriving there to find that the Swedish and Swiss Governments were proposing to accept the Communist proposal to reduce the Neutral Nations Inspection Teams to one in each zone. He had been instrumental in persuading the Foreign Office that this was not a good idea and he was quite sure that this idea had now been dropped. He could assure the Department of State that no reply to the Communists would be made until the Sixteen had replied to the Chinese Communist note. If he understood the situation correctly, that reply [Page 267] would be negative on the question of a conference and would indicate that the participating nations were not content with the NNSC situation. He thought, the Ambassador continued, that this would put the Swedish Government in position to renew the proposal that the teams be withdrawn altogether to the Demilitarized Zone, and he was personally of opinion that the Communists would then accept this proposal.

Mr. Robertson asked what reason there was to believe that the Communists would accept this proposal, since they had not done so in the past and it was difficult to see what would impel them to do so now. The Ambassador said that there had been a conversation with Chou En-lai and the new Swedish Ambassador in Peiping in connection with the Chinese Communist note to the Sixteen, and while there may have been some problems of translation of what was said, the substance of it seemed to be that Chou En-lai had said he realized that the conference proposal would probably be rejected and that if that happened, the Chinese Communists would have to consider what to do next. Mr. Robertson said that our information from Bern and from Stockholm had been that the Swiss and Swedish Governments were definitely unwilling to say that they would withdraw from the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission if the proposal to withdraw the teams to the Demilitarized Zone was not accepted. The Ambassador confirmed that his Foreign Office remained unwilling to go that far.

Mr. Hemmendinger referred to the recent conversation between Mr. Sebald and Count Douglas,2 in which Count Douglas had been informed that the United States had placed a proposal before the Sixteen that the United Nations Command announce in the Military Armistice Commission the provisional suspension of the operation of the provisions of the Armistice relating to the activities of the NNSC in our zone. Ambassador Boheman professed ignorance of this proposal and said that if this were done it would, of course, end the matter so far as his Government was concerned. Mr. Hemmendinger raised the question whether knowledge through press sources that such a proposal was made might lead the Communists to accept the Swiss and Swedish proposals to withdraw to the Demilitarized Zone. He pointed out that there had been a report in a Zurich newspaper that the United States had proposed unilateral action to the Sixteen and that the Communists might have picked up this information. The Ambassador commented that it was not certain what the Communist reaction would be, that it might be against accepting the Swiss and Swedish proposals in that case.

[Page 268]

The Ambassador mentioned that when he was in Stockholm he had brought personally to the attention of the Foreign Minister a little book published by a Swedish member of the Neutral Nations Inspection Teams, which had graphically described the precautions which it had been necessary for the United Nations Command to take in protecting the members of the teams.

  1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 795.00/5–1456. Official Use Only. Drafted by Hemmendinger.
  2. A memorandum of the conversation between Sebald and Douglas on May 4, drafted by Hemmendinger, is ibid., 795.00/5–456.