Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XI, Arms Control and Disarmament

212. Memorandum of Conversation¹

Washington, October 4, 1967, 1:15 p.m.

SUBJECT

• Non-Proliferation Treaty
• ABMs

PARTICIPANTS

• Ambassador Dobrynin, U.S.S.R.
• Mr. William C. Foster, Director, ACDA

Following discussions in New York at dinners between U.S. and Soviet officials, and consistent with the suggestion of Messrs. Rusk and Gromyko, Ambassador Dobrynin invited me to luncheon at the Soviet Embassy to continue discussions particularly concerning non-proliferation.

I reported to Ambassador Dobrynin that the Euratom meeting at which we had hoped for additional comments on the Soviet compromise draft Article III did not consider this subject. In view of that we were continuing our efforts to obtain the views of our allies and Euratom but that a further delay would occur. We went over once more the problems already foreseen with the present Soviet compromise draft mainly having to do with the question of facilities and the references to IAEA and its negotiating authority in relationship to that of Euratom and of the maintenance of Euratom as an entity owning materials and facilities as well as operating a safeguards system. I stated that we had not submitted the latest revision of paragraph 4 of the Soviet compromise draft since to start with we thought it was a retrogressive step and we hoped that they would accept our suggestion for rearrangement of the first sentence of paragraph 4. He did not seem concerned about the possibility of their accepting our suggestion on this but did not wish to comment in detail in view of my statement of possible further changes. In the circumstances he asked whether there was anything for them to do on this article at the moment, and I said I thought not but that, hopefully, we would soon be back to them with possible other suggestions felt to be essential by our allies.

We then discussed suggestions the Mexican, Indians, UAR, and Sweden made in recent meetings at Geneva. It was his feeling that we should attempt to get all suggestions on the table for consideration by the Co-Chairmen and recommendation to the Committee when all suggestions were in. He thought, as we do, that certain of the Mexican proposals² were possibly acceptable but felt that many of the others could not be accepted.

I indicated that some of our allies were concerned about unlimited duration for the treaty and wondered whether the Soviet Union had given consideration to this question since Messrs. Rusk and Gromyko talked about it in June.³ He said that they had not since they continued to believe that an unlimited duration treaty was important and he mentioned once more the thousand year figure. I asked whether Foreign Minister Miki of Japan in his talks on the NPT had mentioned the Japanese suggestion of periodic five-year conferences.⁴ Dobrynin said he saw no real purpose in such periodic reviews. I also raised the question of the difficulties which some of the ENDC members have brought up concerning the very rigid amendments procedure and got no substantive response.

On other non-proliferation matters such as the ENDC recess, the sanctity of Articles I and II, assurances, nothing new was added to the discussions at the New York dinners or in my discussion yesterday with Mendelevich.⁵

On another subject, we had an interesting and fairly lengthy discussion of the ABM/ICBM limitation proposal made by the U.S. in January.⁶ He said that the reason for no response was not the lack of interest nor lack of attention having been given to the subject, but was because of the differing points of view within the Soviet Government on it. He stated that, unlike the U.S. Government where there appeared to be ready means of coordination on both the political and military aspects of such a proposal, in the Soviet Government the Foreign Ministry dealt primarily with political questions and all military matters were the responsibility of the Defense Ministry. In the Foreign Ministry there were few, if any, individuals having experience and competence in a subject of this sort and the military were unwilling to let the Foreign Ministry discuss the question in any way except what he characterized as “meaningless general terms.” I told him that the U.S. Government had been studying this question not only intensively over the last couple of years but indeed, as he knew, had begun to broach it in the Surprise Attack discussions in 1958. He commented, however, that it was his opinion that when our decision was made to deploy a limited ABM system it really was a completely political decision. He wondered therefore whether there could be serious talks about specific military limitations when politically most of the emphasis appeared to be that the U.S. had a superiority of two to three to four times over that of the Soviet Union and that the Congress and the Pentagon in public pronouncements emphasized that the U.S. intended to maintain that. This made it very difficult for those in the Soviet Union who felt that such talks might be useful to convince the military that any serious discussion of limitations and possible reductions was in the Soviet interest. He said, nonetheless, considerations were continuing about how to approach this and he had personally been glad to hear Secretary Rusk’s statement at dinner last week⁷ of the willingness of the U.S. to undertake detailed discussions at any level and anywhere that the Soviet Government might suggest.

The luncheon broke up at 3 p.m.

1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Subject File, Country File, USSR, Dobrynin Conversations, Volume I, 11/63-4/68, Box 229. Secret. Exdis. Drafted by Foster on October 5 and approved in S/S on October 6. The conversation took place at the Soviet Embassy.
2. For text of Mexican Representative Castaneda’s statement to the ENDC, September 19, see Documents on Disarmament, 1967, pp. 395-401.
3. Following the Glassboro Summit in New Jersey June 23-25, Rusk met with Gromyko who was attending the U.N. General Assembly in New York on June 26 and 27. There they continued to discuss the topic of disarmament that President Johnson and Soviet Premier Kosygin had earlier discussed at the Summit. For an account of the June 23 meeting, see Document 198.
4. Foreign Minister Miki delivered an address to the U.N. General Assembly, September 22, on the Japanese Government’s views on the NPT; see Documents on Disarmament, 1967, pp. 413-415.
5. Not further identified.
6. Presumably a reference to Secretary McNamara’s military posture statement delivered before the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Department of Defense Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, January 25, 1967. For an extract, see Documents on Disarmament, 1967, pp. 5-24.
7. Presumably during Secretary Rusk’s attendance at the 22d Session of the U.N. General Assembly held in New York September 25-29.