Editorial Note
The Fifteenth Ministerial meeting of the North Atlantic Council was held in Paris, December 17 to 18, 1954. The meeting was attended by Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Defense, Finance, Economic Affairs, and Defense Production of the 14 countries members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The United States Delegation was headed by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Secretary of the Treasury George M. Humphrey, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert B. Anderson, Director of Foreign Operations Administration Harold E. Stassen, and United States Permanent NATO Representative John C. Hughes. A complete list of the more than 35 Senior Advisers and Advisers of the United States Delegation is presented in Participation of the United States Government in International Conferences, July 1, 1954–June 30, 1955, prepared in the Office of International Conferences, Department of State (Washington, 1956), pages 17–18. For the telegraphic summary reports on the proceedings of the Ministerial meeting, see telegrams Secto 13 and 14, December 17 and Secto 21, December 18, from Paris, infra and pages 554 and 557.
The Secretary of State and members of his party arrived in Paris on the afternoon of December 15, 1954. During his stay in Paris, Secretary Dulles held a number of conversations with various European Foreign Ministers on a variety of topics mostly outside the immediate North Atlantic Treaty Organization framework. His meeting with British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and Canadian External Affairs Minister Lester Pearson, as recorded by Robert Bowie, is printed on page 547. The record of a background press conference by Secretary Dulles on December 16 is printed on page 542.
The basic record of reports and documents about the Ministerial meeting in Paris is preserved in the central files of the Department of State under file number 740.5. The single most comprehensive body of documentation on the Fifteenth Ministerial meeting is maintained in the special file—Conference files, lot 60 D 627, CF 416–420 and 422–423, [Page 550] and it includes complete collections of telegraphic exchanges between the Secretary’s party and Washington during the Paris visit, a seemingly complete set of briefing papers prepared for the Delegation on a wide variety of topics likely to be discussed in Paris mostly outside the NATO framework, a collection of records of meetings with foreign delegations and officials in Paris, and the most complete collection of official NATO documentation available in the Department of State.
For the text of the official communiqué issued in Paris on December 18 at the conclusion of the Fifteenth Ministerial meeting, see Department of State Bulletin, January 3, 1955, pages 10–12. For the text of Secretary Dulles’ press conference on the occasion of his return to Washington on December 21, see ibid., pages 9–10. For the record of Secretary Dulles’ report on the Ministerial meeting delivered to the National Security Council on December 21, see the memorandum of discussion at the 229th Meeting of the Council, page 560.
Documentation relating to the activities and negotiations of Secretary Dulles and his party during their stay in Paris, December 15 to 21, 1954 and not related directly to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will be presented, where appropriate, in other volumes of the Foreign Relations series.