Office of the Historian

264. Memorandum From Secretary of State Vance to President Carter1

Washington, July 11, 1977

1. Visit of Norwegian Foreign Minister: I had Norwegian Foreign Minister Knut Frydenlund for a meeting and luncheon today.2 He was most interested in our assessment of relations with the Soviet Union and the prospects for a SALT agreement. He told me that Norway has a number of issues outstanding with the Soviet Union such as fishing and mineral rights disputes and a wide range of issues relating to Spitzbergen. He said that the prospects for their settlement depend in some measure on the general East–West atmosphere. Frydenlund pointed out that the Soviets would obviously like to settle many of these Northern Flank issues in a bilateral “package deal” between the Soviet Union and Norway. Norway, on the other hand, wants to keep the issues on the Western side multilateralized.

We also covered the whole range of outstanding issues and I found general understanding and sympathy for our foreign policy objectives without exception.3 I raised the administration decision on cargo preference with him.4 While Norway would obviously have preferred no cargo preference decision, it is clear that he finds the levels of preference inherent in your decision tolerable and suggested that Norway can live with it.

[Omitted here is the rest of the memorandum, which covered topics not related to Norway].

  1. Source: Carter Library, Plains File, Box 37, State Department Evening Reports, 6/77. Secret. At the top of the page, Carter wrote: “Cy, J.”↩
  2. A memorandum of conversation for Vance’s meeting with Frydenlund is in Department of State, Vance Papers, Lot 84D241, Box 10, Nodis Memcons 1977. In an undated memorandum to Vance, Vest provided talking points. (Carter Library, National Security Affairs, Country File, Box 57, Norway: 1/77–6/79)↩
  3. In the margin next to this sentence, Carter wrote: “Good.”↩
  4. See Foreign Relations, 1977–1980, Volume III, Foreign Economic Policy, Document 39.↩