292. Message From British Foreign Secretary Macmillan to the Secretary of State1
Many thanks for your personal message.2 Unfortunately this reached me after Nehru had left Chequers for Windsor. However, in the course of our long talk on Saturday morning, Nehru had shown us the President’s letter3 and we had discussed the proposal at some length. Nehru was obviously pleased and flattered by the gracious [Page 642] terms of the letter, but he seemed himself doubtful whether Chou En-lai would regard the scope of the proposed talks as quite wide enough to achieve your purpose. Nehru felt that your suggestion only raised the level of the talks now going on, without extending their scope. We argued strongly that this was a new move and ought to be welcomed as such. But of course not having received your message and thinking from the President’s letter that you meant to use Nehru as intermediary, we did not press the argument with full vigour, although we made our position quite clear. Thinking over our discussion and knowing something of the legalism and hair-splitting of the oriental mind, I feel that perhaps the formula as phrased is rather too rigid. Of course it is obviously right to bar any discussion of Formosa and its future. The question of “citizens of each of our countries …4 who want to return” is clearly the first point for discussion but if all went well on this presumably you would wish the talks to go on to other matters, such as cessation of attacks on shipping, peaceful use of the seas and various other matters connected with “reduction of tension”. You indeed suggest this, but I feel that the restrictive formula, which is obviously right for the great issues, such as the future of Formosa, might be phrased in a way that will at least allow some fairly general and perhaps useful conversations without prejudice to your obligations to Chiang and the Nationalists. It is not easy to think of “other topics” to reduce tension in this part of the world, which would not have at least an indirect bearing on the rights of third parties. Your ingenuity may be able to suggest a formula which might open up useful talks without prejudice to your obligations.
Anthony5 is seeing Nehru for a few minutes at the airport this afternoon when Nehru leaves. I will telegraph tomorrow when I have had a further talk with Anthony. Meanwhile we shall of course be glad to act at Peking as representing your interest, but we shall not move until I hear again from you as to the precise form the suggestion should take.
- Source: Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, Eden–Macmillan–Lloyd Correspondence, 1955–56. Secret. A copy is filed in Department of State, Presidential Correspondence: Lot 66 D 204, Macmillan to Dulles. Sent with a covering note of July 10 from British Embassy Counselor Adam Watson.↩
- Supra.↩
- Transmitted in Document 289.↩
- Ellipsis in the source text.↩
- Prime Minister Eden.↩