I am sending you with this letter the text of a message containing some
ideas which the Prime Minister had wished me to put orally to the
President. As the President is away, I am sending this message to you
and McGeorge Bundy in writing. I
should like to emphasize that they are not so much firm proposals as
ideas which the Prime Minister would like the President to consider. In
the meantime, he would hope that the reply to Mr. Khrushchev could be so worded as not
to exclude the possibility of an initiative along the lines he is
tentatively suggesting.
London, February 24, 1962
TEXT OF MESSAGE
We are in some difficulty over Khrushchev’s latest letter about disarmament. So far
as the eighteen States are concerned, it seems that with the
exception of the satellites and Burma there is a general view that a
meeting of eighteen Heads of Government, many of whom have very
slender practical knowledge of the problems involved, is not likely
to advance the work of disarmament—at any rate not at the beginning
of the conference. At the same time our proposal for the meeting of
Foreign Secretaries and our determination that we should
individually take a personal interest in the work of the commission
has been interpreted as a genuine effort to stop what we called the
sterile competition, especially in nuclear weapons.
But if we simply repeat our original proposals some people will argue
that we are being too negative and not living up to our professed
intention to make a new effort with the Russians. We must therefore
find a constructive line. One plan would be for you and me to say:
“All
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right,
since you won’t have the preliminary meeting of the three Foreign
Secretaries, for the reasons you have given, we will come to Geneva
about March 10 and have a preliminary discussion with you”. If de
Gaulle wished to come too, all the better. This has the advantage
that the meeting of Heads of Government would at least take place
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before
we have to do such tests as we may decide to be necessary. But it
has the disadvantage of abandoning our original position to an
extent which, in view of the general reception of Khrushchev’s proposals, may not be
necessary.
A second plan would be to suggest at least the three Heads of
Government coming at a later stage in the conference, say in
mid-May. But then we would be in the difficulty that we might have
wished to do the tests at the very time that we propose to meet
Khrushchev. This would
give him a chance of calling the meeting off and making a great
rumpus.
A third plan has therefore occurred to me. This, which may seem
rather a strange idea, is that you might invite Khrushchev to come to Washington
at the end of
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April when I am already due to go there. I would of course
postpone my journey to Canada so that we could have a short meeting
together first, followed by a day or two with Khrushchev. If, as seems almost
certain, we made no real progress, then our tests could still be
carried out with no real disadvantage, by announcing the dates
immediately after the meeting.
This plan would really trump his card. It would be difficult for him
to resist. If he accepted, it would allow us to talk in the light of
any work the conference had done, and would let us still maintain
the genuineness of our desire to make a real effort before such
tests as may seem necessary have to be done. If he refused this
offer, we could then stand on our present position and let him do
the sulking, even if he went so far as to stop his people attending
the conference at all. If he did accept, we could then ask de Gaulle
to join us.
What do you think of this?
