372 Foreign Relations, 1958-1960, Volume IX



SUBJECT
    Norstad Plan

    The Secretary opened by saying that he had read von Brentano's
letter' which had been received on Sunday discussing the American
statement of Summit goals, and he could assure the Foreign Minister
there was no need for any concern.
    [5 paragraphs (1/2 page of source text) not declassified]
    The Secretary recounted the history of the Norstad Plan as deriving
from the original American Open-Skies proposal. This had led to a dis-
cussion of possible areas to be affected in various parts of the world. The
Open-Skies proposal, as such or in modified form, might conceivably be
discussed at the Summit. With disarmament talks at a standstill, there is
something very appealing about this proposal. The Soviets, of course,
call it inspection without disarmament. [7 lines of source text not declassi-
fied] General Norstad had not taken the initiative in the present instance.
He had been asked for his military views and he had stayed within le-
gitimate limits.
    [7-1/2 lines of source text not declassified] In response to the Secretary's
query as to whether the Germans objected to any zone in Europe, von
Brentano said that a proposal might be accepted with a definition of the
area to be affected which did not discriminate against certain countries,
such as was the case with the large zone included in the 1957 Western
Disarmament package.2
    Mr. Merchant pointed out that the Norstad Plan was really three
years old, going back to the London Disarmament talks when all vari-
ants of possible zonal proposals were under consideration by the West.
[16-1/2 lines of source text not declassified]
    The Secretary said the idea should not be referred to as the Norstad
Plan but as a zonal plan. Von Brentano commented that it would be best
to avoid the term "zone" entirely. The approach in the Norstad
Plan pa-
per, he continued, would not be so dangerous politically if it did not
start out by attempting to fix the area involved. If the definition in the
paper had stopped with "Atlantic and Urals", he thought it might
be
considered by the Five-Power Western Disarmament Working Group.
[3 lines of source text not declassified]





    1 See Document 140 and footnote 3 thereto.
    2 For the Western disarmament package of 1957, see American Foreign Policy:
Current
Documents, 1957, pp. 1296-1301, 1309-1311, and 1316-1323.