Office of the Historian

273. Message From President Kennedy to Prime Minister Macmillan0

Washington, April 11, 1963.

As I said on the telephone,1 I accept nearly all of your draft.2 There is only one place that troubles me seriously, and that is on your page 5.3 I [Page 671] suggest the following alternative language to replace the three sentences which now begin “If we could make progress here”: “If our chief representatives can make some progress in clarifying the issues which remain between us, then Prime Minister Macmillan/President Kennedy and I would propose to send in due course a very senior representative who would be empowered to speak for both of us and to talk in Moscow directly with you. It is our hope that such a senior representative might be able to bring the matter close enough to a final decision so that it might then be proper to think in terms of a meeting of the three of us at which a definite agreement on a test ban could be reached.” We would then pick up your text beginning with the sentence “It is of course obvious.”

The one other part of the State Department draft4 which may be worth including is the reference to the neutrals’ idea of a quota covering a period of several years. If this were to be included, it might go on your page 4 at line 65 after the words “definite treaty in exchange,” and the language might run as follows: “It may be that we could make some progress on this question of numbers by exploring an idea which has been mentioned by the neutral nations in Geneva—the idea that a quota of on-site inspections might be agreed upon to cover a period of several years, from which inspections could be drawn under more flexible conditions than an annual quota would permit.” If this sentence were included the letter might continue: “But at the moment,” and perhaps with a new paragraph at that point.

Any message from you on this will be relayed to me most promptly at Palm Beach.6

  1. Source: Department of State, Presidential Correspondence: Lot 66 D 204, Kennedy-Macmillan 1962-1963. Secret. Another copy is in the Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Departments and Agencies Series, ACDA, Disarmament, Test Ban Correspondence. A typewritten notation on the source text reads: “Copies sent Secret Eyes Only to Amb. Thompson & ACDA/Foster.”↩
  2. No record of this telephone conversation has been found.↩
  3. See the Enclosure to Document 271.↩
  4. In the paragraph beginning “We should be interested to hear”.↩
  5. This undated draft was circulated informally to the British Embassy under cover of an April 10 memorandum from Bundy to de Zulueta. The draft differed from Macmillan’s April 3 draft principally in its almost total de-emphasis of the summit proposal, its avoidance of a connection between the issues of the test ban and nuclear proliferation, and its suggestion that the United States and the United Kingdom might take up with Khrushchev the proposal of the neutral nations at the Eighteen-Nation Disarmament Committee for a larger number of inspections spread over a longer time period. (Department of State, Presidential Correspondence: Lot 66 D 204, Kennedy-Macmillan 1962-1963)↩
  6. In the paragraph beginning “The practical question is now best to proceed”.↩
  7. The President was in Palm Beach from midday April 11 to April 17.↩