391. Memorandum From Secretary of State Rusk to President Kennedy1
SUBJECT
- Bilateral Talks Concerning US–USSR Cooperation in Outer Space Activities
While in Washington for the Symposium of the International Committee on Space Research (COSPAR), Professor Blagonravov has said that he will be prepared to continue his discussions with Dr. Dryden at Geneva in June during the meetings of the subcommittees of the UN Outer Space Committee. You will recall that Professor Blagonravov is the Soviet scientist who was designated by Khrushchev to discuss with your designee the proposals which were contained in your exchange of letters with Khrushchev on cooperation in outer space activities. The first such discussions between Professor Blagonravov and Dr. Dryden were held in New York City on March 27–30.
As a result of those talks Dr. Dryden feels, and we agree, that the Soviets clearly prefer to develop such arrangements on a step-by-step basis, not on the basis of an overall formal agreement between the two governments. Further, the Soviets are apparently interested in working primarily within multilateral programs (e.g. those of the World Meteorological Organization and the International Telecommunications Union), but on the basis of prior US–USSR agreement. It appears unlikely that significant joint effort in outer space activities will develop in the near term, but there is a prospect that the Soviets will agree to some modest cooperation in the form of coordinated satellite launch schedules, compatible instrumentation, and some additional exchange of technical information.
The talks in New York were preliminary and exploratory. They were limited to the specific proposals contained in your letter to Khrushchev and his reply. It was clear that Professor Blagonravov was not fully prepared on the detailed technical aspects of several of those proposals and was not authorized to make commitments, however preliminary. Thus the June Geneva talks should be more revealing of Soviet willingness to take concrete steps.
At one point in the talks Professor Blagonravov suggested that progress toward cooperation would be greatly facilitated if the US and the USSR would agree to ban all military reconnaissance activities in [Page 892] outer space. (He suggested that Dr. Dryden, as a scientist, should prevail upon his Government to this end.) We have since learned from the Soviet Mission in New York that this proposition is more than a suggestion; that it is in fact a formal Soviet proposal which they are likely to press in the UN Outer Space Subcommittee meetings at Geneva. So far agreement on this point has not been made a precondition to technical cooperation. The Soviets continue to cite the need for disarmament as a precondition to intimate and extensive space cooperation but not necessarily to more modest cooperation.
Following the recent talks, Under Secretary McGhee, who is coordinating this matter for the Department, convened a meeting of the interested agencies of government in which Mr. Webb, Dr. Wiesner, and Dr. Welsh, among others, participated.2 A review of the conduct of these talks during this meeting resulted in an agreement that the present low-key, step-by-step approach through informal talks by scientific representatives holds the most promise of breaking through Soviet reservations and initiating cooperation. For the time being we do not feel it necessary or wise to set a specific deadline by which these talks should be completed successfully or terminated. There will, of course, have to be agreed arrangements covering each project undertaken.