Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, National Security Policy; Arms Control and Disarmament, Volume III

253. Memorandum of Conversation⁰

Paris, May 14, 1960, 5 p.m.

US/MC/14

MEETING OF CHIEFS OF STATE AND HEADS OF GOVERNMENT

Paris, May, 1960

PARTICIPANTS

• United States
  • The Secretary of State
  • Mr. Merchant
  • Ambassador Wadsworth
  • Mr. Farley
  • Mr. Spiers
• United Kingdom
  • Foreign Secretary Lloyd
  • Sir Frederick Hoyer Millar
  • The Hon. C.D.W. O’Neill
  • Mr. J.A. Thomson
  • Mr. A.C.I. Samuel

SUBJECT

• Nuclear Test Negotiations

The Secretary said he understood that Mr. Lloyd felt that Wednesday¹ would be too early for a meeting with the Soviets on suspension of nuclear tests. He said that the timing of such a meeting was of no great moment to us but that we had to reckon with the fact that even as early as Wednesday or Thursday we may not be on speaking terms with the Soviets. Mr. Lloyd agreed that we should suggest a meeting before the atmosphere clouded further. Gromyko was coming to the British Embassy tomorrow² and he would suggest a meeting either Wednesday or Thursday and see how Gromyko reacted. For his part he would like to get on to a subject on which there was a chance of making progress. Therefore, on second thought, he thought that Wednesday would be satisfactory. He would suggest that the meeting take place at the British Embassy. They would arrange for a table which would seat four on each side. The Secretary suggested that two or three more might sit behind. Mr. Merchant suggested that the meeting be held at the Foreign Minister level. Mr. Lloyd felt it would be better to get together immediately with Mr. Khrushchev, and if necessary a further meeting of the Foreign Ministers could be arranged for Thursday. The Secretary agreed, observing that Gromyko would probably have no more leeway than Tsarapkin has had to deal with the issues involved.

The Secretary suggested that there were three major problems: (1) the length of the moratorium, (2) the quota, and (3) the composition of the Control Commission. With respect to the first point, the U.S. position was that the maximum would be two years. Mr. Lloyd suggested that the duration could be related to the length of the research program. The Secretary said that this would be dangerous since there had been a great deal of talk about the research program going on for five years. We felt that two years would suffice for preliminary results from the research program. The moratorium should start with the date of signature, as was contemplated in the March 29 communiqué.³

Mr. Lloyd agreed and asked for the U.S. position on dealing with the quota. Did we want one quota or two? The Secretary said that he saw no sense in insisting on a quota to be applied below the threshold. Perhaps we could seek agreement that there would be a few inspections for experimental purposes. These would not be provided for within the treaty. Mr. Lloyd agreed, saying that these inspections could be represented as part of the research program. He asked for the U.S. position on the number of inspections above the threshold. The Secretary referred to the Rand report⁴ as relevant in this connection stating that it was the first hopeful scientific breakthrough we had had in these negotiations. This was something which would be helpful to us in achieving Senate consent to ratification.

Mr. Lloyd asked how we would propose to handle the negotiations and whether we wished to suggest re-spacing of the control stations to the Soviets. The Secretary reviewed the major conclusions of the Rand report, citing the reductions in the numbers of unidentified events which might be achieved through rearrangement of the stations and addition of either four or nine new stations to the present twenty-one. Mr. Lloyd said that a quota of four inspections would be justified if we were to add 9 stations. Ambassador Wadsworth noted that we could expect Soviet resistance to the addition of stations, although they may be willing to accept such a departure from the Experts’ report if this were the price of a low quota figure.

Mr. O’Neill suggested that it might be wise not to let the Soviets know about the Rand recalculations and that we should not propose a rearrangement or addition of stations until and unless we had reached a final impasse on the quota figure. The first problem was to get the Soviet reaction to our proposal for 20 inspections. Mr. Lloyd disagreed and said that our dealings with Khrushchev would be helped if we gave him all of the facts and figures. Otherwise we would succeed only in feeding his suspicions. Mr. Farley noted that the report was in the public domain and that the Soviets had had an official attending the Joint Committee hearings at which the Rand report was described. Mr. Lloyd said that Khrushchev would probably be prepared to take a practical approach to the matter. Ambassador Wadsworth said that we would have to be prepared to add stations in the U.S. if we were suggesting additions in the Soviet Union.

Mr. Lloyd asked what number of experimental inspections we would seek below the threshold. Ambassador Wadsworth suggested the figure of 10. Mr. Farley said that in view of the fact that there was no real basis for regarding inspections in this area as a deterrent, we should not seek inspections as a matter of right but rather by agreement in the context of a joint study of the possibilities of improving inspection techniques.

The Secretary said that another possibility would be to lower the threshold. There was no reason that we had to stick with the present figure of 4.75. For example, with the addition of some stations and a quota of 10 inspections we might agree to a threshold of 4.4, which would correspond to 5 kilotons.

Mr. Lloyd said that assuming Khrushchev had agreed, say, to 6 inspections and a respacing or addition of stations, would we be prepared to discuss Commission composition. Ambassador Wadsworth said that we had to consider the effect of the composition on voting procedures where a two-thirds majority was provided for in the treaty. Parity in this instance would amount to a veto. Mr. O’Neill said that this was relevant only in connection with voting on the budget, where we were ready to accept a veto. Mr. Lloyd said that he himself favored a veto on the budget total. If there were no budget the treaty would fall. He asked what the U.S. estimates of costs of the system would be. Mr. Farley said that, disregarding the high altitude system, we have previously envisaged an installation cost of between three and five hundred million dollars with yearly operating costs running at perhaps 10 percent of this figure. Last week we had gotten a new estimate which anticipated a cost of up to five hundred million just for the installation of 22 posts in the Soviet Union. This was probably a highly inflated estimate and we felt that the original figure would be more accurate. Mr. Lloyd said that costs on this order did not alarm him. He asked whether the Russians would be likely to raise the composition question here. Ambassador Wadsworth said that he thought a final decision on this question would have to be reached at a high level, although the details could be worked out in Geneva. Mr. Lloyd said that there were two possibilities: 4–4–3 or 4–4–4. Mr. O’Neill said that he preferred the former and original party unanimity on voting the scale of contributions and total budget. Mr. Lloyd said that he felt if we were to indicate to the Soviets here that we could settle on this basis this would loosen Khrushchev up on the other points. He asked what other problems remained.

Ambassador Wadsworth described the position on staffing which was still a major issue. The Secretary said that we should not get into discussion of this but should limit ourselves here to the fairly simple issues. Mr. Lloyd agreed. He said that we should try initially to get agreement on a quota of 20, on the length of the moratorium, and on a 4–4–3 Control Commission composition. The negotiators at Geneva would be left to work out details. He then asked if there was anything likely to come up in connection with the research program, noting that the President at his last press conference had spoken in terms of jointly conducted nuclear tests. The Secretary explained the proposals that we had sent to our delegation regarding the conduct of experiments in the research program and how the terms of the Atomic Energy Act⁵ required us to resort to the “black box” idea.⁶ This was a dilemma since there was also a problem in connection with yield measurements. Both sides will need to know the yield of a particular device before results of experimentation can be considered valid. If internal examination of the devices used cannot be allowed, instrumentation will be required which would be useful for purposes of weapons development.

Ambassador Wadsworth said that his senior scientific adviser at Geneva felt that the simplest solution to the problem would be for the three parties to sit down and develop a new design, starting from scratch. Mr. Farley noted that this would probably not solve the problems since technically a device became Restricted Data as soon as it was conceived. Furthermore, there was the problem of accurate yield prediction. Mr. O’Neill wondered what the position would be if British devices which did not incorporate information received from the United States were used. The Secretary said that he thought the law would not apply in this case. Mr. O’Neill said that he did not think that the U.K. classification system would require automatic declassification of devices disclosed to the Soviets. The Secretary speculated that this might be the solution to the problem we faced. Mr. Farley said that there were other provisions of the law which might make it difficult to use even these devices within the United States. The Secretary suggested that we both look more closely into the possibilities and problems of this approach.

Ambassador Wadsworth noted that a further unsolved problem related to high altitude tests, recalling the February 11 position⁷ that we would agree to ban tests up to altitudes for which effective controls could be agreed. The Secretary described the practical difficulties and costs of the satellite system which had been outlined by the experts in 1959. His own feeling was that we should establish a control system applicable to about 100,000 kilometers and forget about the rest. Mr. Lloyd asked whether in this case we would make a declaration of intention not to test beyond this altitude. The Secretary thought we might. Ambassador Wadsworth said that he preferred the position we had contemplated last August of incorporating the satellite system into the treaty but leaving to the Control Commission the decisions as to whether or not it should actually be installed. Otherwise we would be accused of retreating again from an agreed technical report. Mr. Lloyd said that he did not think we should get into a discussion of this matter with Khrushchev. He agreed with the Secretary that the best approach would be to forget about high altitude tests beyond 100,000 kilometers, simply saying that we would not test in outer space if others did not.

0. Source: Department of State, Secretary’s Memoranda of Conversation: Lot 64 D 199. Secret. Drafted by Farley and Spiers on May 15 and approved by M and S on May 15. The meeting was held at the Embassy. Secretary Herter arrived in Paris on May 13 for discussions preliminary to the summit. For documentation on the summit, see volume IX.
1. May 18.
2. Gromyko came to the British Embassy with Khrushchev at 4:30 p.m. on May 15. Khrushchev attacked the United States, demanded a U.S. apology for the U–2 incident, insisted upon punishment of those U.S. officials responsible for the flight, and demanded an American promise that there would be no future flights. If those conditions were not met, he would not continue the summit. A record of the meeting is in Harold Macmillan, Pointing the Way, pp. 202–203. The meetings on nuclear testing were never held.
3. See footnote 7, Document 251.
4. The Rand study concluded that improvements and revisions of the Geneva system for the 21 proposed sesimic installations in the Soviet Union made detection of underground tests (as opposed to earthquakes) more possible. A briefing on the results of the study is in a memorandum of conversation by Gotzlinger, May 10. (Department of State, Secretary’s Memoranda of Conversation: Lot 64 D 199) See the Supplement. See also Kistiakowsky, A Scientist at the White House, pp. 322–323, 348.
5. For text of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 and its revision of 1958, see 60 Stat. 755 and 72 Stat. 276.
6. The “black box” concept was devised to prevent the Soviet Union from using the seismic improvement program for additional weapons development and to prevent non-nuclear nations from obtaining nuclear weapons technology. Under its terms, the U.S. and U.K. Delegations at Geneva would propose that any devices used in the program should be deposited as “black boxes” with certain restrictions. (Tab B to memorandum of conversation by Spiers, May 5; Eisenhower Library, White House Office Files, Additional Records of the Assistant for Science and Technology, Panel–Disarmament/Nuclear Test Policy, ‘60) See the Supplement.
7. See Documents on Disarmament, 1960, pp. 33–39.