Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume XV, Berlin Crisis, 1962–1963

9. Memorandum From the Representative to the Eighteen-Nation Disarmament Committee (Dean) to Secretary of State Rusk⁰

Geneva, March 13, 1962.

Pursuant to your instructions I called upon Lord Home at his house in Geneva (10 rue Jean-Senebier). There was also present J.B. Godber, Minister of State, Sir Frank Roberts, British Ambassador to Moscow, and Sir Evelyn Shuckburgh, Deputy Under-Secretary of State in the Foreign Office.

1. I gave Lord Home a copy of the telegram we received this morning.¹ After some discussion he recommended the following procedure:

(a) Finesse the lunch today with Gromyko and do not mention either the receipt of the telegram or the proposed afternoon meeting. Make the lunch short and crisp.

(b) U.S. Secretary of State and British Foreign Minister should ask Gromyko to come to see them this afternoon. At that meeting they should say, in no uncertain terms, that this nonsense must stop immediately and apart from other things it is definitely not refraining from actions which might aggravate international tensions as was agreed in the Joint US–USSR Statement of Agreed Principles for Disarmament Negotiations dated September 20, 1961.²

2. The Secretary of State and British Foreign Minister should ask the Foreign Ministers of Canada and Italy to call on Gromyko to protest this action on the eve of the disarmament conference.

3. The Secretary of State and British Foreign Minister should not leave as this would place both Foreign Ministers of friendly powers and Foreign Ministers of non-aligned powers, who came here at our invitation, in a very difficult position. It would leave Gromyko, in effect, in control of the situation. The Secretary should insert a very strong passage in his proposed speech³ denouncing these actions of the Soviet Union in no uncertain terms, state that he had come to propose the broad general and complete disarmament plan, then ask how he could be expected to put forward such a plan in all seriousness in view of these known provocative actions of the USSR. In fact, the Secretary of State and the British Foreign Minister should leave immediately after the opening of the conference unless events would make it seem advisable for them to stay. Certainly they should leave if there is no forthcoming response from the USSR. Lord Home observed that if you and he left before making your proposed speech at the opening of the conference it would give some of the non-aligned Foreign Ministers an opportunity of saying that the US and UK had turned and converted a disarmament conference, to which they had come in good faith, into a Donnybrook over West Berlin. He felt that not only would countries of these Foreign Ministers be hurt and grieved but he did not think we would be in as good a position at the Security Council.

Under-Secretary Shuckburgh wanted to know if we had actual confirmation that the chaff had been dropped in the Berlin Corridor and I advised that we would let him know as soon as we received information on this score.

I have asked Mr. Kohler to advise.

AHD

0. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 396.1–GE/3–1362. Secret. Drafted by Dean and also sent to Bohlen, Kohler, Hillenbrand, Manning, Spiers, and Martin.
1. Presumably reference is to telegram 1726 from Berlin, March 13, which reported that Soviet planes had dropped chaff in the southern and central air corridors to Berlin early that day. (Ibid., 862.72/3–1362)
2. For text of this statement (U.N. doc. A/4879), September 20, 1961, see American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1961, pp. 1091–1094.
3. For text of Rusk’s opening statement to the Eighteen-Nation Disarmament Committee, March 15 (U.N. doc. ENDC/PV.2), see ibid., 1962, pp. 1146–1150.