Memorandum of Conversation with Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Ambassador of France Henri Bonnet, Philip Jessup, and George W. Perkins

M.A. 389 4339 DEPARTMENT OF STATE cort 363 Memorandum of Conversation DATE: Dec. 16, 1950 SUBJECT: French Position on Reply to Soviet Note re CFM PARTICIPANTS: M. Henri Bonnet, Ambassador of France The Secretary of State Ambassador Philip c. Jessup Mr. George W. Perkins, Assistant Secretary of State COPIES TO: s/s, G, 3/A, EUR, WE, EE 1-1493 The French Ambassador said that Mr. Sehuman had asked him to come in to clarify their position on the proposed reply to the Soviet note proposing a CFM. The Ambassador said differences had developed in the preliminary meetings. As he understood it, the US apparently desired to determine whether such a meeting would be worthwhile before agreeing to it, particularly in connection with the Far East or whether the Soviets would merely take a negative position. TUUMAN The UK and France were nore nearly together in feeling that 5° ARCHIVES RECORDS AND "NATIONAL the procedure should be simpler and felt we could simply get together to diseuss the agenda for such a C.FM. SERVICE" GOVER The Ambassador made two points: first, from past exper- 1ence it was clear that Soviet deputies had no authority and could really do nothing. Only the Foreign Minister could really talk and reach agreements. Therefore, the suggestion that talks be held at a lower level was equivalent to a refusal to talk. I pointed out in connection with this point that we had not proposed that there should be agreement in the preliminary talks. The second point which the French Ambassador made was that the three Western powers should not give the impression that we are skeptical about the meeting or that we were DECLASSIFIED making STATE DEOT. MEMO p.n.ty Project NLT f2-4 By NLT- HL NARS, Date fill-dy