Office of the Historian

240. Memorandum of Conversation0

Washington, October 30, 1962.

SUBJECT

  • Denuclearized Zones

PARTICIPANTS

  • Mr. William C. Foster, Director, ACDA
  • Herve Alphand, French Ambassador

At dinner last night, Ambassador Alphand expressed great concern about the resolution being offered in the General Assembly by Brazil in favor of denuclearized zones in Latin America and Africa.1 He felt that Western support of this resolution, and particularly any form of US identification with it, would be misunderstood and would provoke a profound reaction in Western Europe and especially France since it might be interpreted as opening the way for a Rapacki type plan of denuclearization and disengagement. Ambassador Alphand suggested the US make an urgent and high level approach to the French Government reassuring the latter that no such intentions existed.

(Upon being informed of the above, Mr. Beam of ACDA and Mr. Tyler of EUR believe that Ambassador Alphand may have been exaggerating his Government’s possible reaction with a view to later establishing for the record that he had put Washington on notice. It may be pointed out that USUN was instructed by telegram 11272 to brief Western Delegates, including the French, on our views with respect to the Brazilian resolution. Furthermore the same telegram repeated to Paris as Topol 576 suggested an NAC briefing on the Brazilian resolution, to which Ambassador Finletter agreed in his reply Polto 518.3 Consequently, it is felt no special steps vis-à-vis the French are required.)

  1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 600.0012/10-3062. Confidential. Drafted by Beam and initialed by Foster.↩
  2. Brazil introduced a draft resolution on denuclearized zones in Latin America and Africa (U.N. doc. A/C.1/L.312) in the First Committee on September 20. For text of a later revised version of this draft (U.N. doc. A/C.1/L.312/Rev.2) introduced in the First Committee on November 15 by Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, and Ecuador, see Documents on Disarmament, 1962, vol. II, pp. 1056-1057.↩
  3. Dated October 27. (Department of State, Central Files, 700.5611/10-2962)↩
  4. Dated October 28. (Ibid.)↩