34. Memorandum From the Assistant Secretary of State for Management (Eagleburger) to All Regional Assistant Secretaries, Washington, December 29, 1975.1 2
DEPUTY UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR MANAGEMENT
WASHINGTON
TO: All Regional Assistant Secretaries
FROM: M - Lawrence S.
Eagleburger
SUBJECT: Organizing for Multilateral Diplomacy
Following our meeting in October on how to our diplomatic activity in the United Nations and related organizations, I sent a memorandum to the Secretary informing him both of what we have already done and of your suggestions on further measures. The Secretary has approved these additional proposals and has asked us to proceed to implement them.
The Secretary himself will send a telegram to all ambassadors informing them of the Department’s increased interest in multilateral diplomacy, describing the steps we are taking in response to this and suggesting what each embassy might do in this regard.
At the same time, the Secretary would like you to take a number of immediate steps on your own. He requests you to designate one of your deputies to take responsibility for multilateral affairs for your bureau and to serve as a primary contact point for Assistant Secretary Lewis and his deputies. (In the near future IO will establish an Office of Multilateral Affairs headed by a Deputy Assistant Secretary.) The Secretary leaves it up to you to decide whether you wish in addition to appoint one of your officers to maintain working level liaison between the desks and IO regarding these matters. The Secretary would also like you to work with IO to determine which of your embassies should designate a position for multilateral affairs. Finally, he wants you to maintain closer contact with your posts on multilateral affairs and in this connection authorizes you to send a bureau principal, presumably the deputy you designate for multilateral work, to brief your key posts once a year on multilateral affairs.
Beyond this the Secretary will rely on each bureau to decide how it can best further our interests in the multilateral sphere. I hope you will give this issue your continued personal attention and will work with IO to instruct your posts on the specific ways they can implement the Secretary’s desire for a greater effort in multilateral affairs. I attach for your information a copy of a telegram which ARA has sent its embassies.
I will be in touch with the functional bureaus to inform them of these steps and to ask for their cooperation.
Enclosure:
As stated.
- Source: National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files, P770115–0154. Confidential. The enclosure was not found. In their September 24 memorandum to Kissinger (Document 30), Eagleburger and Lord recommended that these measures be adopted. Eagleburger’s memorandum to Kissinger informing him of the results of his October meeting with regional Assistant Secretaries is Document 33.↩
- Eagleburger instructed the regional Assistant Secretaries to take measures to implement Kissinger’s organizing for multilateral diplomacy initiative.↩