Office of the Historian

Conference files, lot 60 D 627, CF 419

Memorandum of Conversation, by the Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs (Merchant)

secret
[Paris,] December 16, 1954.

Subject:

  • Saar

Participants:

  • The Secretary
  • Sir Anthony Eden
  • Sir Harold Caccia
  • Mr. Merchant

Following dinner the Secretary and Mr. Eden briefly discussed the Saar in the light of the meeting with Mendes-France that afternoon. They were each agreed that it would not be possible to give Mendes-France a renewed commitment to support at the peace conference the [Page 1508] detachment of the Saar from Germany. They both desired to explore, however, the possibility of giving him some statement which in limited degree might satisfy him and which might not do damage to Adenauer. Sir Harold Caccia was asked to draft something overnight and confer the next morning with Mr. Merchant. Mr. Merchant was instructed to prepare a draft for Caccia’s consideration at the same time of a letter of intent which could be sent to Mendes-France before the Secretary and Mr. Eden left Paris on the subject of US–UK support of the Franco-German Saar Agreement of October 23, 1954.

Livingston T. Merchant