176. Memorandum of Conversation Between Secretary of State Herter and the French Ambassador (Alphand)0
Alphand came to see me at the Embassy Residence at 12:45 p.m. today. The principal point he wished to make was that a favorable decision by the United States with regard to the amendment of the Bilateral Atomic Energy Agreement so as to permit France to receive additional enriched uranium was of the utmost importance to the French. He then told me, which I admitted we already suspected, that it was Prime Minister [Page 369] Debre who was pushing this matter very hard, largely because of his dislike of EURATOM and his (Debre’s) hopes that the Common Market would be the principal political institution of the Six and that it would not be encumbered by either the EURATOM or the Coal and Steel Community. I told Alphand that I had been discussing this very matter with Mr. McCone earlier in the morning,1 and that we both hoped this matter could be worked out so that the French could get the enriched uranium either through EURATOM, after an amendment of our agreement with that body, or by an amendment to our existing Bilateral. I told him we still had questions to work out with EURATOM and that I hoped the matter could be resolved amicably and quickly.
Alphand then spoke with considerable heat about the extremely bad public reaction which would occur in France if it was announced that we had gone to Congress for the necessary authority to make available a nuclear submarine reactor to the Dutch without doing the same for the French.2 He said he could not overemphasize how great he felt this reaction would be. I told him I did not know just what the situation was as of the present moment with respect to the Dutch submarine reactor but, bearing in mind what he had said, I would go into the matter as soon as I reached Washington. Alphand then told me that the time had come when we had to differentiate between the important things and the little things. He assured me the question of the French Fleet in the Mediterranean and the command structure with regard to respective NATO Airforces were minor matters since, if trouble came, the French would be with us one hundred percent anyway. He indicated, however, that the two matters which he had raised were major matters.3
- Source: Department of State, Central Files, 611.5145/5–2060. Secret. Drafted by Herter. The conversation was held at the U.S. Embassy Residence.↩
- See Documents 174 and 175.↩
- Documentation on the question of cooperation between the United States and the Netherlands on nuclear submarine matters is in Department of State, Central File 740.5611 and in the Eisenhower Library, Staff Secretary Records.↩
- For Alphand’s account of this conversation, see L’Etonnement, pp. 332–333.↩