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    "ocrText": "3/14/54: Reel 1, Track 1 - Page 4\nI told him that I was taking the liberty of coming to him not as a\ngovernment official but that I was now away from government and in a\ndifferent type of pursuit. But that I was a person near the government\nand had good friends in the government, and I thought it might be worth-\nwhile if we were to look at this situation of Korea and see whether there\nwould be any possibility of conducting conversations looking toward a\ntruce. I explained to him that I realized that neither of us could\ncommit our governments, that this was purely exploratory, and went\nthrough I imagine much the same sort of thing that you did, Phil, in\nyour initial talks which were the prototype of what I was doing.\nMR. JESSUP:\nMay I interrupt, George. Did he have-who did he have with him? I\nsuppose you talked in Russian.\nTRUMAL\nMR. KENNAN:\nWe talked in Russian.\nMR. JESSUP:\nAnd he had no one.\nK ARCHIVES a VATIONAL ADMIN' RECORDS\nCOVERANCE\nMR. KENNAN:\nAnd he had no one, which was just the way I wanted it. He naturally could\nsay nothing on the first occasion, and I knew that--I didn't ask him to.\nI\ntold him that if it were agreeable to him, I would like to meet him\nagain in a few days; I thought he might like to reflect on this, and we\nagreed that I should come back the next week at a certain time, and I did.\nNext week when I returned, he said he was able to tell me this. And\nwhen he said it I realized that he was saying something that he had\nand\nreceived from his government/that it was of the most solemn order, and\nI was sure that it reflected a Politburo decision, and he gave it to\nme word for word, and very brief. He said that I can tell you the Soviet\nGovernment wishes a. truce in Korea, and as rapidly as possible. Now,\nthere was a great deal of palaver that went on at each of these occasions\nabout all sorts of things, including the United States and the Communist\nideology and everything else, because we worked up to this and we worked\naway from it in all these conversations."
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