Office of the Historian

337. Memorandum of Conversation1

Belgrade, August 4, 1975.

PARTICIPANTS

  • President Ford
  • Dr. Henry A.Kissinger, Secretary of State and Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs
  • Lt. General Brent Scowcroft, Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs

[Omitted here is discussion of matters other than the European security conference or MBFR.]

Kissinger: The Democrats can’t hurt you from the right. But if SALT blows up they can hurt you from the left, which is where they would then move.

All those guys talking about Helsinki; what frontiers have been recognized? All the frontiers but the German one were signed in ′47–′48—with participation by a Democratic administration. West Germany agreed to the German one.

President: We had more overtures from East European countries than ever before, I think.

Kissinger: Absolutely.

President: Why did the East Europeans want CSCE? To keep the Soviet Union off their backs.

Kissinger: Of course. And whose frontiers have been violated? And by whom?

President: If we lost SALT, etc., shouldn’t we make a speech saying the borders were approved by the Democrats, and the East Europeans wanted inviolability to protect against the Soviet Union?

Kissinger: How about a 15 minute report to the Nation Thursday?2

President: That has some merit. Let’s think about it.

Didn’t Tito go farther than ever before?

Kissinger: I wanted to mention that. Tito is a bellwether of European politics. He obviously liked you—he hasn’t gone to the airport for years. His assessment has to be that you are dominant in world affairs.

[Page 985]

[There was more discussion of Tito.]

President: Let’s make sure we deliver on the military equipment for Tito.

I have no hesitancy speaking up for CSCE and the whole thing.

Kissinger: Everything on this trip went right. Not a thing wrong. The Brezhnev problem is not your doing; something is going on.

[Omitted here is discussion of matters other than the European security conference or MBFR.]

  1. Source: Ford Library, National Security Adviser, Memoranda of Conversation, Box 14, Secret; Nodis. Brackets, with the exception of those indicating omission of unrelated material, are in the original, which does not indicate the time of the meeting or where in Belgrade the meeting took place. President Ford was visiting Yugoslavia from August 3 to 4. (Ford Library, President’s Daily Diary)↩
  2. August 7.↩