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BRIEFING ON FORTHCOMING GENEVA

DISARMAMENT NEGOTIATIONS

FRIDAY, MARCH 9, 1962

U.S. SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS,

Washington, DC.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:15 a.m., in room F-53, U.S. Capitol Building, Hon. John Sparkman presiding. Present: Senators Sparkman, Humphrey, Gore, Lausche, Symington, Wiley, Hickenlooper, Aiken, and Capehart.

Also present: Mr. Marcy, Mr. Newhouse, and Mr. Tillman, of the committee staff.

Senator SPARKMAN. Let the committee come to order, please.

May I say to the committee that the Secretary and Mr. Foster both have an appointment at 12 o'clock with the President, and they would like to get away from here. After all, they are in their last stages of preparation for departure.

We appreciate you gentlemen coming before us this morning, when we know you are so busy. We should be very glad to hear from you.

STATEMENT OF HON. DEAN RUSK, SECRETARY OF STATE AND WILLIAM FOSTER, DIRECTOR, ARMS CONTROL AND DISARMAMENT AGENCY

Secretary RUSK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen. If my voice is not in good form, it is possibly because I am fighting off a cold. I hope the coughs will not be entered on the record.

I will be leaving with our delegation in the morning. We expect to be in Geneva for approximately 10 days. We look upon these Geneva talks as occurring in two stages: The first, the political stage, during which the Foreign Ministers will be there; and the second, the negotiating stage, with respect to disarmament, where the delegations will hopefully be able to sit down and negotiate systematically and carefully on the various proposals that will be before them.

I will see the Foreign Minister of Germany at lunch on Sunday, Lord Home of Great Britain later that afternoon, and then Lord Home and I will have dinner with Mr. Gromyko on Sunday evening. Then I will probably have two more meetings with Gromyko before the date of the opening of the conference on Wednesday evening.

U.S. APPROACH TO MEETINGS

The purpose in my going is to try to find out whether there has been any change whatever in the political framework in which we will be dealing with various problems with the Soviet Union.

I would say at the beginning, Mr. Chairman, that we do not go with either optimism or pessimism, at this point. We are approaching this meeting on a find-out basis. We want to discover, if we can, what might have been decided on what may be coming out of an intensive round of consultations within the Soviet leadership.

I think I have indicated to the committee earlier that we had the feeling that they were in a period of uncertainty about some of their underlying policies. We know some very serious discussions have been going on, because they have had for some time now their key ambassadors from various capitals back in Moscow for consultation.

POSSIBLE CHANGES IN ATTITUDE

Mr. [Anatoly] Dobrynin, who is coming here as Ambassador, has delayed his arrival, presumably to be there for those consultations. And when they decided to hold their meeting of the Central Committee this week, they brought people back from all over the world who were members of the Central Committee, which might not have occurred had agriculture been the only matter of the agenda. We have not, quite frankly, had any information from Moscow that the Central Committee has been discussing far-reaching questions of foreign policy. But we think it most probable that in some form these discussions have been going on.

We need to know whether there has been any change in their general attitude toward the West, toward the difference between a crisis and a détente-whether the problems which they have been having with Peking, reflected all over again in what they said publicly about agriculture, makes any difference to their attitudes toward problems in which we are directly involved.

There are three things-and, Mr. Chairman, you did not mention this, I believe, but I would like to be completely candid-is this an executive session?

Senator SPARKMAN. This is an executive session. You understand our regular procedure. This is purely for our locked files. Secretary RUSK. Right, sir.

Senator SPARKMAN. And if at any time there is anything you want left off completely, just say so, and it won't even be taken down.

DISCUSSION OF BERLIN EXPECTED

Secretary RUSK. There are four questions that I would expect to come up in my discussion with Gromyko before the disarmament conference opens. The first will be Berlin because that is an issue on which we are still on the record on collision course.

The Thompson-Gromyko talks have not produced any movement toward an agreement. Those talks have become increasingly sterile; there have been mutual exchanges of points of view without any indication from Gromyko that they are willing to pick up any

leads, to follow down any paths, to explore any possibilities of the settlement of that question. And I think I would have to report to you that, so far as we see it now, the Thompson-Gromyko talks have run their course. We have squeezed about all that can be squeezed out of that lemon and we don't see that as a profitable enterprise from here on out unless something unusual develops in the talks with Gromyko.

On the other side, we have not had the impression that they, in these talks or otherwise, are trying to precipitate this Berlin crisis to a first-class hot crisis. That is, in his talks, Mr. Gromyko has not been threatening. The talks have been in a businesslike mood, even if unyielding. We do not see military movements behind the curtain which indicate that they are preparing for an early crisis.

This, coupled with the fact that Mr. Khrushchev apparently is looking to the possibility of a summit sometime before June 1st, perhaps indicates a peace in their attitude that is not too critical at the moment from our point of view. But, on the other hand, there is no indication that they are seriously concerned about adjusting their views and moving toward any kind of an agreement.

POTENTIAL COURSES OF SOVIET ACTION

There are approximately six alternatives in this situation that we have to be aware of. One that I would tend to discount somewhat is that they are moving ahead to carry out their own proposals, and, drawing the inferences from their proposals, from their peace treaty, that they are thereby precipitating a crisis. As I say, we do not have very much indication at the present time that this is what they have in mind.

Secondly, they could sign a treaty, but do nothing about it in action. That is, they could sign their treaty, and the East Germans simply go ahead with existing procedures by and large, with perhaps occasional harassments but without blockade, without a major change in the practical situation. That is a possibility. The Ulbricht visit was the occasion for re-affirming Moscow's intention to sign a peace treaty. But nevertheless, that itself would involve some increased tension at best and considerable increased tension at worst. So we really don't know whether that is in their mind.

Third, they could seek some agreement with the West, along the lines of the conversations we have already held. We are inclined to discount that, because they have not been working hard at it, in any negotiating sense, in the last several months, since Gromyko was over here-since he left here after his talks last fall.

Fourth, they might find themselves in a position where, on the one side, they don't want to precipitate a crisis, but on the other, cannot withdraw from their proposals. Therefore, they may be interested in some sort of modus vivendi which would postpone the problem indefinitely.

For example, if this were tossed into the kind of meeting of Foreign Ministers' deputies, which worked on the Austrian business, and put the questions into such a meeting for discussion over a

1 Walter Ulbricht, First Secretary of the East German Communist Party, met with Soviet Premier Khrushchev in Moscow, February 26-27, 1962. They issued a joint communique indicating they had discussed a peace treaty and "normalization" of the situation in West Berlin.

period of time, on the basis that the status quo would remain pending the outcome of those discussions, that might be one of the ways in which they would not have to withdraw from their position, but in which a crisis might be set aside.

Fifth, it might be that they would just prefer to keep the matter in its present form, which is not very satisfactory from the point of view of either one of us, occasional talks, but not much else. Or finally, they could simply sit tight and do nothing at all, including talks.

POSSIBLE SOVIET-WEST GERMAN TALKS

There is a possibility that they may try out a suspension of talks with us, to see whether they can make any effective contact with the West Germans. There have been various reports of Soviet diplomats talking with businessmen, newspapermen, and others in West Germany, seeming to encourage the idea that the West Germans and Moscow ought somehow to talk these things over. And this is something that has gotten caught up in the so-called Kroll affair.2 The West Germans are very reluctant to get involved in this, and so far the Soviet Government has not made any formal approaches to them that would seem to suggest this would make any difference.

QUESTION LIKELY TO BE PUT ON ICE

I would also remind the committee, as I have said before, that we have tried out tentatively various far-reaching proposals, along the lines of German unification, an all-Berlin solution, an international authority to handle this sensitive problem of the administration of the access. We have not been negligent in putting to them various ideas which have been discussed publicly at one time or another in the West. We find no indication, no readiness to go down any of those trails. They still are very set on the notion that East Berlin is not discussible, that this is a part of East Germany, that the only thing to be talked about is West Berlin. It is a very harsh and unacceptable point of view from our side.

I do not believe there are any gimmicks or gadgets that are going to solve this problem. The question here is a direct confrontation of far-reaching proposals on their side and vital interest on our side, and it has to be handled in that framework.

But I will have some talks with Gromyko on this subject. The Western view is quite clear and very firm. It may be that some sort of modus vivendi, some arrangement to put this question on ice, can be found if this is what they may have concluded is the only practical result at the present time. We do not believe the Soviets want a war over West Berlin, but over the period of the last 3 years they have gotten themselves very far out on a limb on their proposals, in their public statements. It may be necessary for them to find some way to put this matter in the refrigerator.

2 On March 9, West Germany recalled its ambassador to the Soviet Union, Hans Kroll, after reports that he had urged a settlement between Germany and the Soviet Union based on two German nations.

PROPOSED TEST BAN TREATY

Second, there will be the question of the nuclear test ban. When the President made his speech last Friday, both parts of that speech were made on the basis of security considerations. That is, it seemed quite clear to everyone that if we had no assurance that Soviet testing would not continue, it seemed obvious to those of us in responsible positions that we had to resume our testingnot so much because of the particular series which the Soviets carried out last autumn, but because, in addition to that, we have no assurance that there will not be another series and another series, and we must not face that with inactivity on our side.

The second part of the speech, which had to do with the nuclear test ban, was also made on the basis of a security judgment-that if there could be a clear, definite, and assured cessation of testing on all sides, that that situation would be in the security interests of the Unites States-given our present nuclear situation and theirs, and given the problems which lie ahead in an unlimited arms race in what is getting to be an extremely complex, costly field.

U.S. GENUINELY WANTS TREATY

From the point of view of our own security interests, this proposal for a test ban treaty was not made on the basis of a gamble that the Soviets would reject it. That is, that part of the speech did not depend upon a reliance on a prediction that the Soviets would reject it. If they were to accept it on the basis that it was put forward, we would be ready to see them accept it and we believe it would be in our security interests to move in that direction. However, I must say that we have had no indication whatever that the Soviets are prepared to sign such a treaty between now and the middle of April.

We are not going to link our testing with any vague notion of progress at Geneva. The President made it very clear that we have to have a satisfactory signed treaty, the implementation of which moves straight ahead, if we are not to go forward with our own test program.

BRITISH CONCERNS ABOUT PUBLIC OPINION

Senator GORE. You are not going to let the British talk you out of that, are you?

Secretary RUSK. No. I was just coming to that-if we could keep this very much among ourselves for the moment-because we think in the next 3 or 4 days this could be straightened out.

It is quite true that the British feel we should come up with new proposals in this treaty, that public opinion would be disappointed if we simply offered them the April treaty as modified by negotiation in the course of the summer.

My own view is that this is not a question that you handle like a debutante's dress-that just because you are going to another party, you have to have a new dress-that this treaty was carefully thought out, carefully discussed within the executive branch and with the leadership up here. It was a treaty which was consistent with our security and this must be the basis of our approach.

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