13. Memorandum of Conversation1
SUBJECT
- Germany and Berlin
PARTICIPANTS
- The Secretary
- Lord Harlech, British Ambassador
- Mr. Tyler
Lord Harlech asked whether the Secretary had yet received a reply from Mr. Butler to his message.2 The Secretary said that nothing had yet come in. He pointed out that any suggestion of an Anglo-Saxon combine on proposals for the reunification of Germany would be deadly. For this reason he wanted to be able to tell the truth when he said there had been no exchange of papers between the UK and the US Government. He was not going to give the Ambassador any document but would limit himself to discussing ideas with him. Otherwise we would certainly lose the Germans and the French.
The Secretary said he was concerned about surfacing the present German proposal. It did not have enough meat in it. It would risk “waking the sleeping dogs” and stimulating the Soviets at a time when we don’t really have anything much in our position.
He said it appeared that Foreign Minister Schroeder felt that it would not be enough for him to make a speech on German reunification and that he needed, politically, to put forward some specific proposals.
The Secretary then gave Lord Harlech an oral outline of the “dream package.” He said that the way to deal with the various elements of the proposals was on the basis of “building blocks,” which could be discussed individually, e.g., European security, mixed commissions, and access problems pending reunification. He emphasized there should not be the slightest hint to the Russians that we had anything specific in mind. He and Lord Harlech agreed on the foregoing, and that no offer should be made which might hint that our thinking lay in the direction of a reunified but neutralized Germany.
There was then some discussion of the possibility of a reduction of forces in Central Europe by “mutual example.” So far there had been no [Page 25] evidence of any pullback of Soviet troops even though there had been some reductions on the Western side.
Lord Harlech asked about a possible timetable. The Secretary said we should go right ahead and talk over the issues one by one, as he had already suggested, and we might eventually reach the stage where we found that we had the elements of a package. He thought there was a possibility that the Soviets might be planning to take an initiative. Also there was the possibility that the Germans themselves might feel that they must move. It was agreed that there would be further discussion in the Ambassadorial Group. Lord Harlech commented that he thought that the Ambassadorial Group machinery might make the process unduly long, and that the time might come when we would find it desirable to move in Bonn. The Secretary said we should go ahead with discussion in the Ambassadorial meeting and then perhaps we might have a quadripartite Foreign Ministers meeting in May before the NATO meeting. Lord Harlech said that if there was a hope of engaging the Soviet Union in talks some time this year, it was more likely that the Soviet Union would respond to a proposal in the form of a general agenda rather than of a detailed plan on which they would feel they must take a position right away. The Secretary said that if it were manageable it might be best to set up a Deputy Foreign Ministers group which would have some latitude in determining the course of the discussions.
Lord Harlech pointed out that the Germans were disinclined to get into too much discussion with the Soviets on peripheral issues, because in proportion as these were disposed of, the problem of Germany and Berlin acquired increasingly the character of a final obstacle to general agreement. He said he thought that any group that was set up should deal with the whole German problem. The Secretary repeated that the Russians might well be preparing their own proposals on this subject. He said that the time might come when the “satellites” might be in a position to play a role. They had a direct interest in the German question and their point of view might not always coincide entirely with that of the Soviets.
After the conversation with the Secretary, Lord Harlech told Mr. Tyler that HMG was thinking of the question of timing in relation to the holding of elections in the UK. The timing of the latter would be a factor in determining whether it would be too late to wait until May before coming forward with some proposals to the Soviets, or at least letting it be known that such proposals were in the wind.