550. Telegram Deldi 39 From Geneva1
Deldi 39. Eyes Only Secretary. From Eaton. I should like to make the following points with respect to the forthcoming visit of Macmillan. The following are my impressions and not based upon any solid evidence. (1) The French delegation here quite apparently does not wish to reach any kind of agreement that can be blessed at the summit, the reasons being that the possible areas of agreement that they see are troop reductions, a test ban or, less likely, nuclear cut-off without substantial weapons destruction. They are opposed to all of these. They, therefore, are keeping things in the air to the extent that they can and avoiding any solid discussion. In my effort yesterday to pin the Russians down with a question on control in terms of manpower and conventional armaments, the French did everything they could to run away from it not because they did not agree on control but because they were fearful that conventional reductions might become an isolated measure that DeGaulle could not accept at the summit. (2) The British are rather on the other side of the fence and would appear to be eager to reach some agreement for blessing at the summit.
I asked Ormsby-Gore yesterday whether he knew if Macmillan planned to discuss with the President any particular point in the field of disarmament other than nuclear tests. He said he did not think there was any particular point but certainly discussion disarmament would very likely take place.
[Facsimile Page 2]In our view, the British are playing a somewhat cagy game. They try hard not to antagonize the French but while with us in general at the same time they are not completely in our camp. This may be because of Ormsby-Gore’s concern that by my taking a fairly firm position at this point on controls it will become increasingly difficult for any measure to reach a point where it is susceptible of having holy water sprinkled on it at the summit. I have impression from British here that they may be overly anxious for agreement on either some particular measure or on broad and fuzzy general principles to take to summit. (3) I believe we have far more chance of getting an eventual agreement which would be acceptable to us by not being too eager in the coming days than by appearing over-anxious with the Russians. I have taken a fairly firm line in all public gatherings but have on two occasions communicated to the Russians that any time they wish to talk about some specific measure I would like to talk to them.
[Typeset Page 2020]The only result was a luncheon yesterday at which Zorin suggested that we accept the Khrushchev plan, failing that, we should agree on all the measures of disarmament, place them in stages, and in time sequence, adopting a goal which was their goal, not ours immediately. My only response to this was that if at any time he had any practical suggestions, he should let me know because I was only too glad to talk with him about them. I specifically asked them to give me any paper which they indicated they had in mind for submission to the summit. They ducked this.
(4) Most important I would hope that we would make abundantly clear to Macmillan that we are not prepared to have any agreement on any specific disarmament measure without first discussing the details of the inspection which would be permitted to verify the particular measure and pinning the Sovs down to agreement with respect to these inspection provisions.
(5) With respect to the summit, I believe it follows that the greatest care must be exercised against agreeing with the Russians in general terms that we will accept any measure [Facsimile Page 3] which is subject to adequate verification because the Russians would seize on the substance of the agreement and walk away from the control.
From the impressions we now have, after two weeks here, I do not believe that any particular measures or set of general principles have reached a stage where it would be productive to seek agreement on them at the summit.
The foregoing does not repeat not in any way mean that between now and the summit discussions there may not develop here specific measures or general principles which might be introduced for endorsement and we will continue our efforts to see what can be developed. At this stage, however, we see nothing which we can presently suggest.
I do not think that forcing the pace here in the interest of securing something to agree at the summit would be useful for the longer range prospects of disarmament negotiations.
The foregoing comments on the summit, I submit in recognition that other factors of which I may not be aware may have an important bearing on strategy.
- Source: Disarmament and the Macmillan visit. Secret. 3 pp. NARA, RG 59, Central Files, 396.12–GE/3–2660.↩