264. Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in France0
3528. Paris pass USRO. Department appreciates your analysis in Embtel 28041 and fully agrees with your assessment situation. We therefore believe that in present circumstances we should press forward with [Page 749] UK on Polaris agreement and on immediate assignment of contingents to NATO Nuclear Force as well as with other NATO powers on multilateral mixed-manned force. We also agree that in light De Gaulle press conference we should not now undertake new initiative with French that would lead them to expect that we would sweeten Nassau offer without any concomitant change in French policy, since at this juncture such change seems highly unlikely.
We believe it is more than ever clear that De Gaulle will not contemplate any fundamental changes in his policy or move to our view re desirability increasingly united Europe working in ever closer partnership with US in nuclear and other field, until and unless march of events and attitudes of other countries suggests that basic policy of interdependence is likely to prevail. While keeping firmly on our present course we wish to make sure that France is at all times aware that door is continuously open and that we are ever ready to discuss new arrangements in which we cooperate, both bilaterally and in a multilateral framework, more closely with France and in which France cooperates more closely with movement toward European unity and Atlantic partnership.
It is important however that French understand that our larger objectives are inconsistent with the concept of help to a French nuclear policy that is not evolving in directions which will contribute to, rather than detract from, the cohesion of the European Community and the Atlantic partnership.
As our discussions with UK unfold and as we develop more precisely our ideas with respect to development mixed-manned component of NATO Nuclear Force, our intention is to instruct you to keep French, at whatever level you deem appropriate in light of developing situation, abreast of our thinking so that French do not get impression it is object our policy to freeze them out; French exclusion, it must be clear, is strictly a consequence of their own continuing wish to be excluded and any forthcomingness on French part with respect cooperation in these endeavors would be fully reciprocated by us.
- Source: Department of State, Central Files, 751.11/1–1563. Secret; Limit Distribution. Drafted by Spiers on January 18; cleared with Owen, Popper, Bundy, Kitchen, Schaetzel, Tyler, McNaughton, and WE; and initialed and approved by Rusk. Repeated to London, Bonn, Rome, and Brussels.↩
- Telegram 2804, January 15, reported that de Gaulle’s views on the subjects treated at his press conference the previous day were fairly well known and had been reported before. The only surprise was that he had stated them publicly with such brutality and frankness. (Ibid., 375.800/1–1563) For a transcript of the press conference, see Major Addresses, Statements and Press Conferences of General Charles de Gaulle, May 19, 1958–January 31, 1964, pp. 208–222; see also American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1963, pp. 378–380.↩