145. Telegram From the Embassy in the Soviet Union to the Department of State1
2009. 1. When we had finished with problems of immediate concern in my meeting last night with Gromyko (Embtel 2000),2 I turned to over-all state of our relations. Our discussion centered on Vietnam and German access to nuclear weapons, and I did not see in Gromyko’s remarks evidence of any fresh thinking on either of these problems.
2. I began by recalling my recent conversation with Ambassador Dobrynin in Washington3 in which I had had to tell him that I had found the President and others of our government discouraged by constant hostile tone of Soviet press and of statements by Soviet leaders, that I had regretted this trend in our affairs, and that I had been distressed on my return to find that if anything the attacks upon us had become even harsher. Gromyko replied that he could cite many of our own statements about USSR and its policy which were hostile in extreme, and indeed there would not be file big enough to hold all anti-Soviet material in US press, and these attacks had increased of late. He said he knew of my conversation with Dobrynin but that he must tell me his opinion that US was to blame for fact that our relations had gotten cooler. We knew their appraisal of certain aspects of our policy, he said, and they made no effort to conceal it. But if true comparison could be made of the relative tone of hostility in each other’s press and public statements, we would not be the gainer by such comparison.
3. Gromyko said Soviet Government had always tried and was still trying to find common ground with US, to find points of agreement on all issues, but fact was that US did not show same readiness. It was our policy in Vietnam above all which aggravated our relations, and he and Brezhnev and Kosygin had made this clear in their statements. It followed from all this, he said, that whether our relations deteriorated or not depended on US.
[Page 363]4. I said I was glad to have him confirm Soviet interest in better relations. However, we had not been organizing anti-Soviet meetings all over US of kind Soviets had been holding against us in recent days, and it had been Soviet leaders who were speaking of a “freeze” in our relations. I said it was true that we had fundamental differences between us over Vietnam, but I had thought from our previous talks that there was an element of common interest in peaceful settlement and removal of this dangerous situation. Not only were Soviets taking harder propaganda line on Vietnam in general but going farther in stress on demand that US must get out of Vietnam, on Pham Van Dong’s four points, on the acceptance of the NFLSV. This could only delay rather than help towards settlement.
5. Gromyko denied there had been any change in Soviet line. He said it had been their position for two or three years that US forces had no place in South Vietnam; that it was US who had torpedoed 1954 Geneva Agreements which called for elections and reunification. As for legitimate government in South Vietnam, it is only NLFSV which represented any real force there and it is they, and “not those who are constantly changing like a kaleidoscope,” who are true government.
6. I concluded that I did not want today to engage Gromyko in long debate on Vietnam. Our versions of history there were different. We considered that real breach of Geneva Agreement was aggression from North Vietnam. Whatever Soviets might think of our presence in Vietnam, we had undertaken a commitment to South Vietnamese Government, which continued to consist of people who like South Vietnamese in general were fighting to keep from being taken over by force. We did not like to be there, but we would honor our commitment. We had accepted Soviet Government’s statements they were not in position to take action to facilitate peaceful settlement, but I hoped that at least they would not make statements and take positions which would make it harder for solution to be reached.
7. At this point Gromyko shifted our conversation to German nuclear access, subject of septel.4
- Source: National Archives and Records Administration, RG 59, Central Files 1964–66, POL US–USSR. Confidential. Repeated to Saigon.↩
- Dated December 22, it transmitted a brief summary of Kohler’s 1–1/4 hour meeting with Gromyko on December 22. The other problems discussed were the travel ban on military attachés, negotiations for a new exchanges agreement, non-proliferation and the Federal Republic of Germany, and the case of Newcomb Mott who was arrested on September 4 after crossing into the Soviet Union from Norway. Further documentation on the Mott case, which ended on January 21, 1966, when Soviet authorities informed the United States that he had committed suicide, is ibid., PS 7–1 US–USSR/Mott, Newcomb.↩
- See Document 137.↩
- Telegram 2008 from Moscow, December 23. (National Archives and Records Administration, RG 59, Central Files 1964–66, DEF 18)↩