Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume E–14, Part 2, Documents on Arms Control and Nonproliferation, 1973–1976

83. Memorandum of Conversation¹

Washington, September 21, 1974, 12:15–12:39 p.m.

PARTICIPANTS

• USSR

  • Andrei A. Gromyko, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR
  • Anatoliy F. Dobrynin, Soviet Ambassador to the U.S.

• U.S.

  • President Gerald 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

[The conversation began with greetings and initial pleasantries.]

Gromyko: Kissinger follows me very closely. I cannot afford to make a mistake.

The President: I enjoyed our talk, and Secretary Kissinger has filled me in on his talks with you.

Kissinger: Just before this meeting, Gromyko gave me a response to the suggestion that we agree on nuclear reactor safeguards. That is very important.

The President: Would this have to be an agreement?

Kissinger: Yes, because the problem now is that each country sells reactors competitively.

Gromyko: On this, nonproliferation is a problem that is as important as it was ten years ago.

The President: Maybe so.

Gromyko: Two-thirds of the states have ratified it, but the remainder haven’t. It would be good if we two did our best to get more states to ratify.

The President: I hope we could work effectively on this. I’m interested, Congress is, and if we could stabilize this . . .

Kissinger: These are two points. One is the spread of reactor technology. Maybe we can do something on this. The other is, the Foreign Minister wouldn’t want some of his allies to get the impression of condominium.

Gromyko: If you mean our real allies [smile], it is no problem. No one can predict how someone might act irresponsibly.

Kissinger: Speaking frankly, France has sold four reactors to Iran and we don’t know what safeguards there were. If we two can agree on safeguards, then we could go to the Europeans.

Dobrynin: Do you have sufficient safeguards?

Kissinger: In the Egyptian case, we have, we think, foolproof safeguards. If we two can agree and if we get the Europeans to agree, we can control the situation. We will tell you our safeguards—maybe you have better ones.

Gromyko: Sometimes Japan and Brazil are mentioned. What do you think?

The President: Japan has its own problems . . .

Kissinger: The line between weapons and peaceful uses is vague. The Indian explosion obviously has military implication. The Japanese have a big nuclear program but have not done any explosion yet. If they moved this way, they would go like India and could be a big power very quickly.

[Omitted here is discussion unrelated to nonproliferation issues.]

1. Summary: President Ford and Kissinger discussed nonproliferation issues with Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko and Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin.

   Source: Ford Library, National Security Adviser, Memoranda of Conversations, 1973–1977, Box 6. Secret; Nodis. All brackets and ellipses are in the original except brackets indicating text omitted by the editors. The meeting took place in the Oval Office. The memorandum of conversation is printed in full in Foreign Relations, 1969–1976, volume XVI, Soviet Union, August 1974–December 1976, as Document 40. Ford and Kissinger also met with Gromyko and Dobrynin during the morning of September 20; Kissinger met separately with Gromyko and Dobrynin that afternoon. For the memoranda of conversation, see ibid., Documents 37 and 38.