Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Western Europe, Volume VII, Part 2

70. Memorandum of Conversation⁰

November 20, 1958.

SUBJECT

• De Gaulle Memorandum

PARTICIPANTS

• The Acting Secretary
• M. Joxe, Secretary-General, French Foreign Office¹
• Ambassador Hervé Alphand, French Embassy
• M. Lucet, French Minister
• Mr. Livingston T. Merchant, EUR
• Mr. Robert H. McBride, WE

M. Joxe said he wished to discuss first the subjects raised in the de Gaulle memorandum. He said this was a vast field, but he hoped we were about ready to discuss it tripartitely. He said the question of tripartitism was implicit and even explicit in the memorandum and thus tripartite talks were one of the main things the French were interested in.

The Acting Secretary said he thought we would be ready about the 26th or 27th of the month, but that we wanted time to notify the Germans and Italians and the NATO Council first. Joxe noted de Gaulle was seeing Adenauer on the 26th.² He added he himself had recently seen Adenauer in Germany and they had discussed this matter of more or less permanent tripartite consultation on political and military matters, and that the Chancellor had not been disturbed thereby. The Chancellor was opposed, Joxe added, to a tripartite directorate or specific organism but did not object to regular exchanges among the three countries, provided the effect was not to weaken NATO. Adenauer had added that the Germans were not responsible for any public misinterpretation of de Gaulle’s ideas which might have occurred.

Joxe then passed on to the Italian problem which he said was more sensitive. He had discussed this in Paris recently with Folchi, and also earlier in Rome with Gronchi and Fanfani. He thought the Italian ambitions in the Near East and the Mediterranean generally had much to do with their attitude, and he speculated that they wished special ties with the three powers particularly over Middle Eastern questions. He agreed that before any tripartite talks were to begin the Germans and Italians should be informed. He noted the French would also wish to inform the Italians and Germans of the talks. He thought the draft press release which we had accepted covering tripartite talks was good and was accurate.³

The Acting Secretary asked what line the French would follow in general in tripartite talks. Ambassador Alphand said that he would begin with a general exposé of the French thesis, and would answer such questions as were posed and were covered in his instructions, and would refer others to Paris. He said he would cover the following two general categories: first, the question of general strategic organization of the free world and the various potential theatres of operations. Most of this was primarily military and lay outside the NATO area. The second area which he would cover was political and military and related to the better organization of tripartite consultation and planning. If these discussions related to NATO matters, they would be related to NATO. If there were tripartite agreements on these NATO matters, the three would make recommendations to NATO. If there were no tripartite agreement, NATO would be informed anyway. If the discussions related to matters extraneous to NATO, presumably the Council would not be informed.

Joxe said he thought de Gaulle’s basic thought was to establish an organic tripartite contact on world problems, including arrangements for nuclear weapons, both tactical weapons and IRBMs. De Gaulle did not wish to damage NATO but he did wish constant tripartite consultation, and some special statute covering nuclear weapons, even if this could not be the same as the bilateral US-UK agreement. He stated that de Gaulle considered NATO a valid instrument of policy but believed it had limitations for France.

Joxe said he thought the US wished to have discussions in NAC on the de Gaulle memorandum and said he did not believe this was a happy idea. Tripartite talks at least in this stage would probably not touch on matters within NATO’s competence. If the tripartite talks led to the establishment of common positions, NATO should be informed thereof, but he did not believe there should be tripartite discussions of the substance of the memorandum in NAC simply because de Gaulle had given Spaak a copy on a personal basis. He had gathered that the Secretary’s idea was for the three representatives to NATO in Paris to discuss the problem with Spaak. He wondered what the US position would be if Spaak recommended that the whole matter should be discussed in detail in NAC.

The Acting Secretary stated that we did not have to discuss every point in NATO, but if matters were discussed in tripartite talks which had been the subject of NATO interest, then we should report our findings to NAC. We must avoid developing in the other NATO countries a suspicion that we were in fact developing a tripartite world directorate. Mr. McBride added we thought from the Secretary’s previous talks on this subject that he believed we should inform NAC before the talks started. He had not discussed the exact procedure for keeping NAC informed on the talks after they began but obviously this must be done, even if NATO were not informed of the details of each discussion.

Ambassador Alphand said we could consult Spaak 24 hours before the talks started and the press release was issued. It was noted that the Department had sent instructions to USRO to concert with the British and French Permanent Representatives now regarding an approach to Spaak. We were waiting to hear from Paris the results of this first tripartite talk there. Ambassador Alphand said that he believed the question of continuing NATO consultation was met by the last sentence of the agreed communiqué regarding keeping other interested parties informed.

The Acting Secretary concluded that it was hard to cover this point exactly now since our agenda was unknown. Joxe said he would consider this problem further, and agreed it was probably a good idea to ask Spaak for his views now. Joxe said he would inform Paris of the foregoing and communicate with us further. He thought the problem was to determine where informing the Council stopped and consulting them on each detail began. The Acting Secretary said undoubtedly informing NAC was one of the subjects we would want to discuss tripartitely. It was agreed that the communiqué which we had accepted probably formed the real basis for our handling of the problem of informing NAC.

0. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 740.5/11–2058. Confidential. Drafted by McBride and approved by Herter on December 11. See also Document 71.
1. Joxe came to Washington for talks with Department of State officials November 20–21, after meeting in New York with the French U.N. Delegation and with Hammarskjöld.
2. For de Gaulle’s record of this meeting at Bad Kreuznach on November 26, see Mémoires, pp. 190–191. For a summary of Alphand’s report to Dulles on this conversation, see Part 1, Document 40, footnote 1.
3. For text of this December 4 Department of State announcement, see Department of State Bulletin, December 22, 1958, p. 1012.