Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981–1988, Volume XXXVIII, International Economic Development; International Debt; Foreign Assistance

65. Memorandum From the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Allen) to Multiple Recipients¹

Washington, October 17, 1981

SUBJECT

• President’s Opening Statement at Cancun

Important substantive and stylistic changes must be made in the President’s draft opening statement at Cancun. Some suggestions are contained in an attachment to this memo.²

There is one issue, however, that needs to be resolved before further drafting—how the President deals with the issue of Global Negotiations. The State draft raises two questions:

1. Should the President himself lay down the conditions and thereby link his personal prestige with the issue?

2. If he does, can he spell out the conditions with sufficient force and detail or will statesmanship require that he soft-pedal the issue? (Notice that in the State draft the President identifies our four conditions only as “considerations”.)

Discussion:

If the President himself lays down the conditions, he sets himself up for one of three possible outcomes. There is only a slim or no chance that the other countries at Cancun will agree to these conditions. They have not done so in New York for the past two years, and many of these countries argue that Cancun does not have the authority to take decisions on specific conditions related to the Global Negotiations (since Cancun is not a universal forum). Hence, three outcomes are likely:

1. Confrontation if the President spells out the conditions with force and detail and sticks to his conditions.

2. The appearance of caving in by the U.S. if the President modifies or withdraws his conditions.

3. Being rolled if the President states the conditions in a highly general way and identifies them only as “considerations”, since other governments will say they have always accepted these conditions and hence are more than willing to return to New York on this basis.

ALTERNATIVE: An alternative way to state our position at Cancun is as follows:

1. The President reaffirms his interest in an international dialogue with developing countries, as he has done in his recent development speech.

2. The President recalls that at Ottawa, the U.S. indicated its readiness to “participate in preparations for a mutually acceptable process of global negotiations in circumstances offering the prospect of meaningful progress.”

3. In an important sense, the dialogue we seek already exists; Cancun is another step in this process.

4. The President indicates that he has come to Cancun to exchange views on the substantive issues of development and that he has, in a series of speeches by himself and key Cabinet officials, laid out the vital and specific issues that must be addressed in this discussion and identified the principles and institutions that have achieved the greatest success in dealing with these issues in the past.

5. The President then notes that the U.S. Government (implying not only Ronald Reagan—see below) has always had reservations about the specific talks in the UN known as Global Negotiations. U.S. concerns about specific drafting points, etc. therefore are well known. The President avoids listing these conditions but indicates that his officials will be discussing these matters at Cancun and, if necessary, in some informal subministerial follow up contacts after Cancun. The President expresses his hope that heads of government will focus on substance, not procedural matters.

6. The U.S. delegation distributes in a separate official paper the detailed conditions for a return to preparatory talks. This paper spells out not only the conditions themselves but also point-by-point implementation of these conditions in a draft text of a new agenda and procedures to replace the present von Wechmar text.

Advantages of Alternatives:

1. By taking a more general approach to the question of conditions, the President avoids staking his personal prestige on highly detailed points or having to state the conditions in watered-down form.

2. By distributing a highly detailed official paper referred to by the President, the U.S. government makes clear its positions on the issues.

3. By suggesting that the conditions represent “concerns” of the U.S. government since the passage of Resolution 34/138, the President establishes the continuity of U.S. policies and suggests that these conditions are not new, tough, confrontational policies devised by Ronald Reagan but are long established positions of the U.S. government.

4. This approach allows discussions about conditions to proceed at Cancun and after but among officials only. The President stays on the high ground of discussing serious issues, yet at the same time does not appear to be stonewalling further talks.

1. Source: Reagan Library, Edwin Meese Files, Cabinet Council Material, Cancun Summit Meeting 10/21–10/23 Preparation Materials. No classification marking. Sent to Meese, Baker, Deaver, Anderson, Weidenbaum, and Darman.
2. The suggested changes are attached but not printed. A copy of the State draft of Reagan’s opening remarks at Cancun is in the Reagan Library, Executive Secretariat, NSC Trip File, North-South Economic Summit Cancun Mexico 10/22/1981–10/23/1981.