Office of the Historian

600.0012/1–2054

Memorandum of Conversation, by the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs (Bonbright)1

top secret
Washington, January 20, 1954.
  • Subject:
  • Discussions with Soviets on President’s Atomic Proposal
  • Participants:
  • Mr. de Juniac, French Chargé d’Affaires a.i.
  • Mr. Merchant—EUR
  • Mr. Bonbright—EUR

Mr. de Juniac of the French Embassy came in at 5:30 p.m.

Mr. Merchant began by telling him of our telephone call to the Soviet Embassy yesterday which resulted in the Secretary’s receiving Soviet Ambassador Zarubin at 5 p.m. at the latter’s request. Mr. Merchant then outlined briefly and orally the points made by Mr. Zarubin. In the course of his explanation Mr. de Juniac inquired [Page 1353] whether the Soviets had left a paper with us. When Mr. Merchant indicated that they had left an informal paper, Mr. de Juniac did not pursue the matter further.

At the conclusion of Mr. Merchant’s presentation Mr. de Juniac expressed interest in “all powers that bear the chief responsibility for maintaining peace and international security.” He did not specifically ask if France had been mentioned but he did wish to know whether the Soviets envisaged bilateral conversations with the United States on questions of substance as well as on questions of procedure. It seemed to him from Mr. Merchant’s summary of the Soviet position that the latter was at least open to this interpretation. Mr. Merchant agreed that this point was not entirely clear. While Mr. de Juniac did not press the matter further it was quite obvious that this would be a cardinal point with the French.

Mr. Merchant did not inform Mr. de Juniac of the Secretary’s thoughts for his discussion with Molotov in Berlin. Mr. de Juniac did inquire whether we contemplated discussing the problem as an item for the agenda of the Four Power Conference. Mr. Merchant said that we did not contemplate doing this and that the Secretary planned to speak to Molotov separately about it.

  1. According to a notation on the source text, copies of this memorandum were sent “eyes only” to Smith (U), Murphy (G), MacArthur (C), Bowie (S/P), Arneson (S/AE), and Key (UNA).↩