Office of the Historian

167. Memorandum of Conversation1

Washington, June 21, 1971, 5 p.m.

SUBJECT

  • Meeting with Dobrynin

[Omitted here is discussion unrelated to SALT.]

Dobrynin then handed me a piece of paper (attached)2 which lifted some discrepancies between our English text and their translation of the SALT letter. He said it was not a major matter because we were not responsible for their translation of the text. I said that I did not think that any issues would have to be settled by recourse to the text and that I hoped they would approach matters in a positive spirit. Dobrynin said they would but that it would be extremely helpful if we did not insist from the beginning that we talk about ABM and offensive weapons jointly. He said this would create a major bureaucratic difficulty for them and weaken the influence of the Foreign Office. He could assure me that if we concentrated on ABM for the first two or three weeks, that then there would be no difficulty linking the offensive discussions. I told him I would take this up with Smith.3

  1. Source: National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, Box 491, President’s Trip Files, Dobrynin/Kissinger, 1971, Vol. 6 [Part 1]. Top Secret; Sensitive; Eyes Only. The meeting took place in the Map Room at the White House. The full text of the memorandum of conversation is printed in Foreign Relations, 1969–1976, volume XIII, Soviet Union, October 1970–September 1971, Document 263.↩
  2. Attached but not printed.↩
  3. On June 28 Kissinger and Dobrynin met to discuss several issues. According to a memorandum of conversation prepared by Kissinger, they had the following exchange about SALT: “[Dobrynin] said that Garthoff had had a conversation with Vorontsov and had talked in great generalities about a treaty form and, secondly, had mentioned a very broad agreement on offensive limitations. Dobrynin wanted to tell me that in his view, Moscow was prepared for an ICBM freeze, but the broader the freeze on our side, the more difficult their bureaucratic problem would become.” (National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, Box 491, President’s Trip Files, Dobrynin/Kissinger, 1971, Vol. 6 [Part 1])↩