194. Editorial Note
On March 12, 1971, Assistant to the President Kissinger met Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin in the Map Room at the White House from 8:05 to 8:55 a.m. to discuss the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks as well as the Berlin negotiations. (Record of Schedule; Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Kissinger Papers, Box 438, Miscellany, 1968–76) According to the memorandum of conversation, Dobrynin had “set up the meeting urgently and it was held early in the morning because he was leaving for New York.” The memorandum records the conversation on Berlin as follows:
“Dobrynin then raised the Berlin issue and asked whether I had anything new to tell him. I said that we were waiting for the Soviet reply to our access proposal. Dobrynin said it would be a lot easier for them if we could give them ground on Federal presence. I said that we had gone over this before—that it would be a lot easier to sell the reduction of Federal presence in the Federal Republic if the Soviet Union made it worthwhile by being generous on an access agreement, and they still had every hedge in the sense that it was a package deal. Dobrynin said they were in exactly the opposite position with the East Germans.
“We agreed to meet again on March 15 at 4:00 p.m. in order to discuss our draft reply.” (National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, Box 491, President’s Trip Files, Dobrynin/Kissinger, 1971, Vol. 5 [Part 2])
Kissinger forwarded the memorandum of conversation to the President on March 18. (Memorandum from Kissinger to the President, March 18; ibid.) The memorandum is scheduled for publication in Foreign Relations, 1969–1976, volume XIII.