Office of the Historian

9. Briefing Memorandum From the Assistant Secretary of State-Designate for Economic and Business Affairs (Hormats) to the Under Secretary of State-Designate for Economic Affairs (Rashish)1

Washington, April 20, 1981

SUBJECT

  • Strategy and Major Objectives for the April 22 Sherpas Meeting

Based on the consensus which is developing in our IG on LDC economic relations, I believe that our strategy in Paris this week should be clear and simple with respect to North/South issues. We should strive to keep the focus on LDC economic issues and on the real problems of development and away from the Global Negotiations type of rhetoric. Specifically, while de-emphasizing the North/South issues relative to East/West and some of the other items on the agenda, we should strive to:

1)
Change the entire tone and perspective from which North/South issues have been looked at. We should try to shift attention away from the agenda as stated by the G–77 and away from global debates. The emphasis should be on dealing in practical terms with specific LDC problems in ways that are realistic and take account of our very limited resources.
2)
We should push our allies strongly to drop the mea culpa mentality which runs through the Canadian paper2 and the emphasis on ever-increasing amounts of development assistance and resource transfers.
3)
We should persuade them to place greater emphasis on the importance of the adjustment process and on the need to restore non-inflationary growth in both the industrialized countries and the LDCs.
4)
We should seek their concurrence in placing far greater stress on private sector solutions to LDC economic problems.
5)
We should strongly avoid getting into a prolonged and detailed debate about the many specific proposals contained in the Canadian draft, even though we will need to note our disagreement on a number of dubious proposals (see page 3 of attached talking points).3 We must avoid turning the Ottawa Summit into an extensive debate on the controversial nitty-gritty issues of development policy.

The attached talking points represent an attempt to achieve the above results.

  1. Source: Department of State, Bureau of Economic Affairs, Office of Economical and Agricultural Affairs Files, Official Economic Summit Files, 1975–1991, Lot 93D490: 1981 Ottawa Summit North/South Can Paper. No classification marking. Drafted by Adrian Basora (EB/IFD/ODF); cleared by the IG on Economic Relations with LDCs. An unknown hand wrote: “extra” at the top of the memorandum.↩
  2. Paper not found.↩
  3. The undated “Talking Points on Canadian Draft Summit Paper,” are attached but not printed.↩