Memorandum, State Department Summary of Telegrams

the OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE DECLASSIFIED E.O. 12065, Sec. 3-402 WASHINGTON State By DEB NLT, Date 9-4-85 Dept. Guidelines, March 6, 1982 March 28, 1951 SECRET SUMMARY OF TELEGRAMS FOUR-POWER The 18th session of the Paris talks on EXPLORATORY TALKS Tuesday was the longest to date, and was featured by a restatement of the Western position, a long propaganda harangue by Gromyko, and the intro- duction of the following new tripartite agenda proposal: 'Treaties of peace with Rumania, Bulgaria and Hungary including their provisions on human rights, their military clauses and their final clauses on settlement of dis - putes. 11 Chairman Davies interrupted Gromyko finally with a request for the Deputies views on adjournment; Gromyko had not yet begun his com- ments on the new tripartite proposal, and will continue his statements to - day. We have informed Jessup that we share his recently expressed feeling that we must soon try some new approach to the agenda. We think it would be best to use a fully neutral and fairly simple proposal. It appears to us that further elaboration of the present tripartite proposals can only result in an undesirably complex agenda and at the same time we would incur the risk of serious erosion of our position concerning the use of the phrase "German demilitarization". We think that a proposal (such as the French recently suggested at a tripartite meeting) for a divided agenda which would state that under item 1 (causes of inter - national tension) the Western Powers would discuss certain items and that the Soviets would discuss certain items might provide the best solution which could be obtained, provided the Western Powers' list of items favorably presented the Western point of view. Should it become necessary eventually to break up the meeting without agreement, we believe it would be preferable that this take place because of a Soviet refual to accept an obviously neutral agenda, and not because of some refinement of phrase- ology in a more complex formulation, the true significance of which it would be difficult to explain to world opinion. We think it would be tacti- cally preferable to inaugurate this new approach in quadripartite meetings SECRET