Office of the Historian

191. Letter From the Minister for Economic Affairs in the Embassy in France (Brand) to the Director, Office of European Community and Atlantic Political Economic Affairs (Katz)1

Paris, January 19, 1968.

Dear Abe:

The somewhat excessive delay in coming up with the promised letter on the French attitude toward COCOM has been due partly to the press of recent events but more to the fact that when we sat down to think about it, we had no new information on which to base an assessment.

The visit earlier this week of Senator Mondale looking into East-West trade matters has helped in this respect. The Senator politely but [Page 542] bluntly asked Brunet (Foreign Office), Chapelle (DREE), Varnoux (the French COCOM representative) and a couple of others: (A) why does France stay in COCOM; (B) do COCOM restrictions hamper French trade with the East; and (C) having seen the mistakes of the 30’s in strengthening a likely enemy, do not the French see security reasons for restricting at least some strategic goods?

The French answers were consistent, given without hesitation, and added up to the following: (A) France sees value in COCOM for competitive commercial reasons; were it not for COCOM, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe would buy advanced technical goods from sources other than France, particularly the United States; (B) COCOM does not really hamper the development of French trade with the East; furthermore, the US Delegation is reasonable in COCOM; (C) the GOF does not see strategic reason for barring the shipment of any product to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

On the latter point, Brunet argued that the USSR has shown it possesses the technical knowledge and resources to produce any item it needs. (No one advanced the obvious argument that the GOF no longer considers the USSR as an enemy.)

We found a modicum of comfort in equally direct GOF statements that France does not equate Communist China with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. France “would not oppose a China differential” reached through the relaxation of existing controls toward Eastern Europe and the USSR.

So there we are. Brunet and Chapelle responded frankly and fully to the Senator’s questions and it might not be a favor to them to report their statements fully by airgram or cable. We also got some interesting observations relating to their recent negotiations in Moscow with the Petite and Grande Commissions (which we will report in further airgrams on French-Soviet East-West trade).

With best regards.

Sincerely,

Bob

See you Sunday.2

  1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, STR 13–1. Limited Official Use; Official-Informal.↩
  2. The postscript is handwritten. Sunday was January 21.↩