Office of the Historian

107. Memorandum From the Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs (Wallis) to Secretary of State Shultz1

Washington, April 14, 1983

SUBJECT

  • United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)

(1) A memorandum nominally from EB but actually the joint product of EB, SP, IO and perhaps others.2 It represents the predominant views of this building.

(2) A memorandum from me (drafted by Martin Bailey) suggesting a very different approach than that of the EB memo.3

(3) A cable from Larry Eagleburger disagreeing with both the EB and the AW views.4

(4) A memorandum from me (drafted by Bailey) pointing out that in fact the Eagleburger memo is 85 percent in agreement with me, and disagreeing with the other 15 percent.5

Since February, I have been considering the UNCTAD question and discussing it circumspectly with people in Europe and here, including yesterday with the Secretary General of UNCTAD.6 [Page 283] In particular I have discussed it in detail several times with Bill Brock. He is prepared to make the speech at UNCTAD, or to have me make it. The general approach would be that taken by the President at Cancun.

A relevant anecdote: During the GATT meetings in November, the British (Walker and Rees), Germans (Lambsdorff and Steeg), and U.S. (Brock and I) had a private lunch. Suddenly, one of the Brits burst out, “Ronald Reagan has changed the world. He went to Cancun, got up in front of all those LDC’s, and said ‘BALLS’. The LDC’s had known all along that it was balls, so he changed the world in an instant.” I think we may find an equally susceptible audience at UNCTAD and, more important, back in the home capitals.

Allen Wallis7
  1. Source: Reagan Library, George Shultz Papers, Official Memoranda (04/21/1983). Confidential; Exdis. Hill initialed the memorandum on April 14. The date: “’83 Apr 21” is stamped on the memorandum. A stamped notation reading “GPS” appears on the memorandum, indicating Shultz saw it. Shultz wrote in the top right-hand corner of the memorandum: “AW, I agree with your approach but it seems to me we should focus on the real problems of development, as you suggest, rather than a threat to withdraw. Pls get into my North-South speech being drafted in S/P. GPS.”↩
  2. The March 30 memorandum from Constable to Shultz is attached but not printed. See also footnote 2, Document 102.↩
  3. The April 8 memorandum from Wallis to Shultz is not attached, but printed as Document 102.↩
  4. The April 10 telegram from Eagleburger is not attached, but is printed as Document 104.↩
  5. The April 13 memorandum from Wallis to Shultz is not attached, but printed as Document 105. Shultz drew an arrow from the left-hand margin to the space after the fourth point and wrote: “(5) Memo from S/P” and “(6) [illegible].”↩
  6. According to telegram 108218 to all diplomatic posts, April 20, Wallis, Brock, and Sprinkel met with UNCTAD Secretary General Gamani Corea in Washington on April 13 to “sound out U.S. views on the conference and promote a successful non-confrontational session based on a new mood of G–77 ‘seriousness’ and ‘moderation.’” The Department’s view of the G–77’s “moderation” was that “while the tone of the G–77 rhetoric seems to have eased somewhat, reflecting a sense of recession-induced urgency, the substance of the demands—for greatly increased resource transfers and other unilateral concessions by the industrial countries—remains unrealistic and radical.” (Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, Electronic Telegrams, D830219–0948)↩
  7. Wallis initialed “AW” above his typed signature.↩