Office of the Historian

194. Telegram From the Embassy in the United Kingdom to the Department of State1

London, May 9, 1957—noon.

6100. Eyes only for the Secretary from Stassen.

1.
Separate from the concrete terms which I am cabling in response to your message in Deptel 7854,2 it is my judgment that it would assist in reaching a sound, partial agreement for first steps with the USSR if at some appropriate point in the negotiations I was authorized to indicate to Zorin that if the subcommittee reached agreement on the draft of partial measures for the first step, the Foreign Ministers might then meet to finalize and sign the agreement and, following these signatures, to engage in some discussion on the major political problems between East and West and, if fruitful work appeared possible, then Foreign Ministers then to establish negotiating groups of subordinate officials to follow through in search of solutions of such political problems.
2.
The implication would not include a commitment for such a meeting and would renew the lines of the February 26, 1957 note from Lodge to Kuznetzov in this regard.3
3.
My principal reasons for believing this would help in reaching agreement are because it would help to allay the continuing suspicion by the Soviet that the U.S. is not in fact serious even now in these negotiations for partial agreement; a suspicion that is fed by speeches such as those Army Secretary Brucker has been giving recently;4 and second, if we are right that the major Soviet motivations in the matter of a partial agreement and of being willing to begin to open the Soviet [Page 504] Union is to avoid the dangers of a nuclear war in which the Soviet would be destroyed, then they are aware of the added necessity of subsequent negotiations to resolve the most intense political issues.
4.
I will of course not make any such references to Zorin unless you specifically authorize me to do so.
Brown
  1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 330.13/5–957. Top Secret; Eyes Only.↩
  2. See footnote 6, Document 192.↩
  3. Not found in Department of State files.↩
  4. Not further identified.↩