114. Letter From President Eisenhower to Prime Minister Eden1
Dear Anthony: We have had quite a few discussions here these last days about the COCOM and CHINCOM trade controls. Foster wrote to Selwyn Lloyd a few days ago and he will be talking further with SELWYN at Paris next week. In the meantime I want to let you know how much I hope that you can find it possible to get copper wire back on the embargoed list. All the information I get from our military, intelligence and economic people is that these exports are seriously interfering with our common objectives in a number of unfortunate ways. On the other hand, we are inclined to believe that it is also consistent with our common objectives to acquiesce in liberal use of the exception procedure for rubber and a number of other items on the CHINCOM list as Foster will explain further to SELWYN in Paris.
I am sorry that we have been so slow about this matter but it is full of all sorts of complications for us.
I congratulate you on the way you emerged, at least in public opinion, from your encounter with the Bear.2
With warm regard,
As ever,
- Source: Eisenhower Library, Whitman File, International File. Confidential. Transmitted in telegram 6461 to London, April 27. (Department of State, Central Files, 460.509/4–2756)↩
- Reference is to the official visit of Bulganin and Khrushchev to the United Kingdom, April 18–27. Documentation on the visit is Ibid., 033.6141.↩