223. Editorial Note
On July 23, Chairman Khrushchev addressed a second letter to President Eisenhower concerning the Soviet proposal for a summit meeting to consider what Khrushchev referred to as “a threat to peace in the region of the Near and Middle East.” The letter was delivered to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow at 10 p.m. local time and the text was transmitted to the Department of State in telegram 216 from Moscow, July 23. (Department of State, Central Files, 396.1/7–2358) The text of the letter was subsequently released and is printed in American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1958, pages 999–1000. Khrushchev addressed similar letters on July 23 to British Prime Minister Macmillan, French President De Gaulle, Indian Prime Minister Nehru, and U.N. Secretary-General Hammarskjöld. For texts of these letters, including a copy of the letter to Eisenhower, see U.N. doc. S/4064, July 23, 1958. In his letter to Eisenhower, Khrushchev accepted the concept of a Security Council meeting as the framework for discussions on the Middle East, but proposed that the meeting involve the heads of state of the Soviet Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and India, although India was not currently a member of the Security Council. He again emphasized the urgency of such a meeting which he proposed should begin in the Security Council on July 28.
An assessment of Khrushchev’s second letter by several senior Department of State officials on July 23 concluded: “Khrushchev in the guise of accepting a Security Council meeting is in fact planning a summit meeting on the terms of his original proposal, that is, the Heads of Government of the U.S., the U.K., the USSR, France and India plus the Secretary-General of the United Nations. To accomplish [Page 380] this he has distorted Macmillan’s language proposing a meeting in the ‘forum’ of the Security Council to mean ‘within the framework of the Security Council.” They recommended to the Secretary that: “Our reply should make it clear that we are not prepared to participate in a meeting organized on the basis of Khrushchev’s proposal.” (Memorandum from Kohler to Dulles, July 23; Department of State, Central Files, 396.1/7–2358)