114. Message From Prime Minister Macmillan to President Eisenhower0
My Dear Friend: Thank you very much for your letter of April 5,1 with which you enclosed a draft letter to Mr. Khrushchev about how to conduct the Summit.
As you know from our talks at Camp David,2 our ideas are very much in line on this. The great thing is to avoid a repetition of the enormous meetings which were held at Geneva last time, and to get down to meetings of a manageable size where discussion and negotiation can really take place.
I think that it is difficult at this stage to be very precise about the exact arrangements for the Summit, although I quite understand your [Page 280] feeling that it should not last more than six days. I certainly agree that we ought to have some meetings of Heads of Government only and that our general plan might be for the Heads to meet in the mornings and the advisers to have meetings in the afternoons. Whether we shall want the Foreign Ministers with us will I imagine depend rather on how the Conference proceeds.
I would hope that any plenary session at the beginning of the Conference could be limited to purely formal matters, including perhaps a speech by President de Gaulle as the host. I think that we should try to avoid giving the Russians an opportunity for a propaganda speech at the opening of the Conference.
As regards the restricted meetings of Heads of Government, with or without Foreign Ministers, I feel that it would be better if the interpretation could be organized centrally, probably from a box, interpretation could then be either consecutive or simultaneous as we preferred, and the great advantage would be that we should know that all of us were having the same translation. I am not sure that President De Gaulle agrees about this and he may prefer whispered interpretation. The second point is that I am sure that there ought to be adequate records of a meeting of this sort with the Russians, and I would therefore suggest that each Head of Government should be accompanied by one private secretary or note taker. Their task would, of course, be made much easier by a central arrangement for interpretation.
I have discussed your letter briefly with President De Gaulle and he seems to be in general agreement with the line which you advocate and with which I so much agree. We both feel, however, that there would be something to be said for the three Foreign Ministers, who are meeting in Washington next week, having a word together about the arrangements and perhaps reaching agreement on the draft of a letter which you would then send to Khrushchev as the host at the Foreign Ministers’ meeting. I am rather in favor of this plan myself, because De Gaulle will, after all, be the host at the Summit and it would, I think, be wiser for him to be closely associated with any letter which you send to Khrushchev on this subject.3
With warm regard,
As ever,
- Source: Department of State, Presidential Correspondence: Lot 66 D 204. Secret. Attached to a note from Caccia to Herter, dated March 8, which stated that it was a copy of a letter that had been delivered to the President on that day.↩
- See Document 110.↩
- See Document 105.↩
- President De Gaulle replied to Eisenhower’s letter on April 9, agreeing on the need for small meetings but feeling that the duration of the summit meeting should not be limited. The French President stressed that “these few problems” could be examined when he visited the United States April 22–24. (Department of State, Presidential Correspondence: Lot 66 D 204)↩
- Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩