. fl ,.J e-,"\. >''~ˇ ( .d..7/-f77 ' BH'fIMI :fl-I' DEPART~ENT OF STATE DECLASSlnm MemoranJum ol Conversation E.O. 12958..i Sec. 3.6 DATE: November 18, 1964 NL.I f1-/S7 New York, N. W. By ~ , NARA Date to-30;.t/ SUBJECT: Czech Affairs, Czech Relations with USSR, Czech Foreign Relations, UN Financing Issue l~ ~ 'l PARTICIPANTS: Milos VEJVODA, .Deputy Chief of Czechoslovak ) Mission to the UN John A. Baker, US Mission to the UN Helmut Sonnenfeldt, INR/RSB RSB/OD EUR RSB/EE EUR/EEnm/onˇ EUR/SOV USUN IHR/DDC IO Amembassies Moscow INR/EX-6 UNP PragueRSB/BP-6 M -Mr. White Bonn O/SY Paris In a wide-ranging talk over lllnch, Vejvoda made the followingpoints. a full Presidium member was worrisome. He thought Shelepin had been put in to moderate the police. Vejvoda qualified his generaloptimism by some remarks about the possibility of Sino-Soviet accommodation, which he felt sure would occur if the US attempted to "isolate" the USSR. (This was evidently a reference to :JS policy on the UN financing issue.) Undertones of worry about a possible change in Soviet policy also appeared in a bantering reply to a question regarding Soviet intentions to ratify Charte~ a~end­ments for the enlargement of UN Councils. Vejvoda said he thoughtthe Soviets would do so unless Chou En-lai had persuaded them otherwise. He said Yugoslavia and Albania, ˇfor opposite reasons, were most worried about the implications of Khrushchev's fall. 2. In a discussion of Czech cultural developments, Vejvodastressed the flourishing experimental theater in Prague. Asked how the Party felt about this, he stated that Party Secretary Koucky,who implements but does not make policy in this field, tried to steer a middle cours?. between the beatniks and the dogmatists. He said the Prague theater was a great attraction for West German tourists whom the Czechs welcome :for currency reasons along with the Austrians who visit Brno and Bratislava on one day trius. (Vejvoda denied that many West Germans came to Czechoslovakia to meet East German relatives, indicating that GDR nationals we~e not in any case particularly welcome nor easily able to leave East Germany.) Asked whether there wou1d be a return flow of Czech visitors to the FRG and Austria, Vejvoda expressed doubt not, he said, because the Czechs :feared defections but because of their hard currency problem. This led h1m to remark that defection was a tough personal problem for the individuals involved but that for his part he wished that such individuals would think not only about their own desires but also about the :fact that every defection caused the dogmatists at home to clamp down on those who stay behind. The evolution toward greater 1nte11ectua1 scope and freedom gets set back through such incidents. -3 ­ for their inferior products, like second-rate shoes, which no-one but the Chinese would take. He said the Chinese had been good trading partners, delivering needed raw materials and even hard currency punctually. Vejvoda observed that the Czech man in the street was quite resentful of economic assistance to African countries, which were poor credit risks. But Cuba was popular both for romantic reasons and because it supplied tropical fruit which were a luxury in a $mall landlocked country like his own. Vejvoda did not deny that there had been problems over economic relations with Cuba but stressed that at the time of the 1962 missile crisis there had been a lot of sympathy for Castro because he seemed to have suffered the same fate as the Czechs did in 1938. Vejvoda said he had always suspected that the whole missile episode had been ˇpre-arranged by the US and the USSR --a notion on which he was strongly challenged. 4. On German issues, Vejvoda said that Berlin was Khrushchev's greatest failure. He had thought he had the power to get a free city but instead got himself into a military confrontation. The Czechs were especially bitter over this (despite their general approval of Khrushchev) because it had obliged them to undertake a major mobilization, including industrial, in 1961 in order to put the totally unready Czech army into some semblance of fighting shape. Vejvoda attributed Czech economic problems in great part to the dislocations produced by this mobilization (plus the simultaneous disappearance of the Chinese market). He thought that the Wall however regrettable for the people of Berlin, had stabi­lized the German situation and enabled Khrushchev to terminate his Berlin gambit. He thought too that the East German regime had managed to improve the lot of the people following theˇ Wall, though he did not contradict a comment that of all the Communist parties in Eastern Europe the SED had attracted the most odious individuals to its ranks. -4 ­ German-speaking Jews. He pointed out that Defense Minister Lomsky was Jewish and expressed his belief that there was no discrimination against Jews so far as r.rofessional and official jobs were con­cerned. He thought US 'propaganda" exaggerated anti-semitism in the USSR, though he admLtted that it did exist there historically. He did not think that Czech Jews had ever attempted to urge the Soviets to curb anti-semitism. 6. In mentioning Lomsky, Vejvoda got to talking about former Defense Minister Svoboda who is now apparently the head o~ the military academy. Svoboda was put to work as an accountant in a cooperative after being purged in 1948. Some time later, Vejvodathought in 1952, a Soviet delegation came to Prague and some of its members who had known Svoboda in the USSR during the war asked about him rather insistently. Eventually the Czech authorities agreed to produce him and sent an official to Svoboda's apartment to locate him. He had Mrs. Svoboda pull out one of Svoboda's general's uniforms and went off to the cooperative where he told Svoboda to put on the uniform and go to meet his Soviet friends,but instructed him not to mention his low estate. Svoboda per~ormed as instructed and thereafter was gradually rehabilitated. ".'" ˇ5 ­ go beyond economic matters and observed that 0zechoslovakia held recent French cultural accomplishments in hig~ regard and was desirous of deepening relations _in this field. ˇ 9ˇ. On Article 19, Vejvoda deplored the current impasse andˇ expressed the view that the Soviets would not pay up under pressure. Reminded that the US position was not motivated by the desire to bring pressure on the Soviet Union _b_ut by our view of the role of the UN, Vejvoda acknowledged that the Soviets had missed opportunities to avoid the present situation. He stressed that the Soviets wished to preserve Security Council prerogatives in the peacekeeping field and not to weaken them by accepting the system of Assembly assessments for peacekeeping. He thought that the only hope now was to act on Soviet suggestions for a working group to consider future peacekeeping modalities while postpon:.ng a showdown. He was again reminded that US proposals in this field had been on the table since March and that Soviet responses had been utterly un­compromising. It was suggested to him that the new Soviet leader­ship could quite plausibly have backed off from Khrushchev's untenable position when it came to power. He indicated that the French were urging the Soviets to stand firm while the developing countries were giving contradictory advice. Some expressed the view that the Soviets could not give in under pressure while others were concerned that the US and Soviets would get together to curb the role of the Assembly. Vejvoda implied that the Czechs here had tried to explain the firmness of the US position, including the domestic reasons for it, to the Soviets and to the Foreign Ministry in Prague. He hinted that hiˇs delegation had even raised with Prague the possibility that Czechoslovakia pay its arrears, but had been overruled. Prague had replied that "for the time being" it would support th~ USSR.