Office of the Historian

174. Memorandum of Conversation0

Washington, March 30, 1962.

SUBJECT

  • Presentation of Letters of Credence by New Soviet Ambassador

PARTICIPANTS

  • The President
  • Anatoliy F. Dobrynin, The Soviet Ambassador
  • Angier B. Duke, Chief of Protocol
  • Richard H. Davis, Deputy Assistant Secretary for European Affairs

At 12:30 today the President received the new Soviet Ambassador, Anatoliy F. Dobrynin, for presentation of his letters of credence. During the meeting, which lasted about fifteen minutes, only three matters of substance were touched upon.

[Page 396]

Ambassador Dobrynin remarked he had seen Chairman Khrushchev before his departure from Moscow and that the Chairman had asked him to convey his best wishes to the President. The President thanked him and then remarked with regard to Laos that he considered the agreement reached with Chairman Khrushchev at Vienna on this subject as still valid; that we had been trying, not entirely with complete success, to achieve a Laos settlement along the lines of that agreement; that Ambassador Harriman had recently had some intensive discussions in Laos to this end and that it was important that during our efforts to achieve a final settlement, the cease-fire should be observed. Ambassador Dobrynin assured the President that the Soviet Government considered the Vienna agreement on Laos still valid.

The President said that he thought his views on meeting at the summit were well known; that summit meetings where four or five were involved were complicated matters; that people expected from a summit meeting some positive accord. On the other hand, the President continued, it was possible in informal meetings such as at Vienna to exchange views and it was not necessary to expect that any agreement or accord on specific matters come from such informal meetings. The Ambassador said that he understood the Presidentʼs views on this question.

With regard to the postponement of the exchange of television interviews, the President expressed the hope that the near future might bring an opportune moment to revive the exchange to which the Ambassador assented.

  1. Source: Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Countries Series,USSR, Dobrynin Talks. Confidential. No drafting information appears on the source text, but it was approved in the White House on April 9. Another copy of this memorandum is in Department of State, Presidential Memoranda of Conversation: Lot 66 D 149. For Dobryninʼs recollection of this meeting, see his memoir, In Confidence: Moscowʼs Ambassador to Americaʼs Six Cold War Presidents, pp. 58-59. Memoranda of Dobryninʼs initial calls on Acting Secretary of State Ball on March 21 and Secretary of State Rusk on March 29, are in Department of State, Secretaryʼs Memoranda of Conversation: Lot 65 D 330.↩