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

97. Memorandum From Henry Nau of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Clark)¹

Washington, July 2, 1982

SUBJECT

• Post-Versailles Clarifications of Summit Agreement on Global Negotiations

I am sending to you, mainly for the record, a full set of the documents defining the agreement reached by the Summit leaders at Versailles on Global Negotiations.²

After the Summit, we initiated a correspondence with the French chairman of the Summit North-South Working Group (Jean-Claude Paye) and subsequently with the other Summit countries, to clarify technical points in the secret working document and to confirm the status of this document. We insisted that the working document have the same status as the Versailles Declaration, since it defines the guarantee of the independence of the specialized agencies which is the basis, and the only basis, in the Declaration on which we agreed to sound hopeful about the launching of the Global Negotiations.

Moreover, the working document contains the procedural agreement among the Summit leaders that their delegations will cooperate in New York on the basis of unanimity in ensuring that the guarantee of the specialized agencies defined in the working document is not subject to change or qualification by the developing countries. The seven must all agree to any further changes beyond amendments specified in the working document. If they do not, i.e., if the allies try to isolate the U.S. as they have done so often in the past, they must raise the issue to the heads of government level. At that level, we feel confident that the President can at least count on Prime Minister Thatcher to resist actions that might harm the specialized agencies.

This is the first time ever that we have established a unified position among the key industrial countries in New York and tied them to us in subsequent discussions with the developing countries.

1. Source: Reagan Library, Executive Secretariat, NSC Trip File, President’s Trip to Versailles Economic Summit June 4–6, 1982; NLR–755–14–16–1–0. Confidential. Sent for information. Wheeler initialed the top right-hand corner of the memorandum.
2. Not attached. The full set of documents, Tabs A–N, is attached to a June 29 memorandum from Nau to multiple recipients in the Department of State, Bureau of Economic Affairs, Office of Economical and Agricultural Affairs Files, Official Economic Summit Files, 1975–1991, Lot 93D490: Versailles Summit—North/South 1982.