Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XIII, Western Europe Region

307. Letter From the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (Rostow) to Foreign Minister Harmel¹

Washington, May 25, 1968.

Dear Mr. Minister:

Thank you for your thoughtful and interesting letter of May 15.² You are of course quite right that we are intensely interested in carrying out the mandate of the NATO Council’s Resolution approving the Special Group’s Report on the future tasks of the Alliance. Political developments during the last few months make progress in this direction more urgent than ever before. It is our hope that the June meeting will make constructive progress at least on arms control and disarmament proposals, and on the question of Mediterranean security.

We share your deep interest in the arms control question. Your letter came just at the moment that we ourselves were submitting to Belgium and other Alliance members our thoughts on the manner of dealing with the mutual force reductions question at the forthcoming NATO Ministerial Meeting.³ Ambassadors Scheyven and De Staercke will probably have informed you by now of a draft resolution which we are suggesting for consideration in NATO.

We believe our suggestions would go far toward meeting the purposes you have in mind, although in a different form from that proposed by your government following the discussions between Belgium and Poland. With regard to the latter, we wonder if the specific Belgian suggestions might not best be examined as part of the detailed studies on regional arms control problems now being made in NATO. I understand that though progress is being made in these studies, they will not be completed in time for the Reykjavik meeting. In part for this reason we decided to put forward our suggestions for a general resolution which ministers might adopt at Reykjavik. We fully agree with your thought that our objective at Reykjavik should be to promote a meaningful dialogue with the Soviet Union and the states of Eastern Europe, and not to score a polemical point in the field of propaganda. Our consultations should help to clarify and orient all separate talks with colleagues from Eastern Europe.

I have discussed your letter with Secretary Rusk who shares your view of the importance of frank discussions among ministers in a relatively informal setting during the meetings of the North Atlantic Council. We believe that specific arrangements to facilitate the work of the ministers at Reykjavik can best be worked out through our Permanent Representatives, and I have therefore asked Ambassador Cleveland to keep in particular close touch with Ambassador De Staercke to pursue your suggestion.

It is as always a pleasure to hear from you. I’m sorry we have not had a chance to meet for several months.

Sincerely yours,

Eugene V. Rostow

1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, DEF 18. No classification marking.
2. A copy of this letter is ibid., DEF 4 NATO, attached to a letter of transmittal from Ambassador Ridgway Knight to Rostow, also dated May 15.
3. The resolution was transmitted to the NATO capitals in telegram 167504, May 21. (Ibid., DEF 6 NATO) The draft was subsequently discussed at a North Atlantic Council Permanent Representatives luncheon on May 22 where reaction to the U.S. initiative was “unanimously” favorable, but reaction to the language of the draft was unfavorable, it being too formal and too much like a U.N. resolution. (Telegram 3173 from Brussels, May 23; ibid.) Further discussion produced a shorter resolution in line with the draft proposed by the United States, which was attached to the final communique of the June 24–25 North Atlantic Council meeting at Reykjavik, Iceland. For text, see Department of State Bulletin, July 15, 1968, p. 75.