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Under-Secretary of State for External Affairs Ritchie to Secretary of State for External Affairs Sharp1

CSCE: Conclusion of Preparatory Talks

It is expected that the multilateral preparatory talks (MPT – called by the Finns the “Helsinki Consultations”) will conclude on Friday next, June 8, with the approval of an agenda for the CSCE itself, as well as mandates for the committees and sub-committees which are to prepare the documents for the final conference.

Apart from the question of a date for the opening of the first (ministerial) stage, a subject which will be dealt with later in this memorandum, your approval is sought for our Ambassador in Helsinki to express Canada’s participation in the consensus required to pass the final document to Governments. (It is likely that participants will be asked to indicate, perhaps by June 20, to the Finnish Secretariat the formal approval of their Governments; if so, a separate memorandum will be prepared for the Cabinet2 requesting that approval and seeking concurrence in the lines of policy which Canada should follow in the coming months at the CSCE.) Although we have not received the final document as a whole, the attached compendium of the mandates has been constructed from the individual elements which have attracted consensus in recent weeks, and which have been sent to us as “advance texts”.

It can fairly be said that the objectives which were set by Canada and by NATO have been achieved; in fact, we have, through perseverance and patience, gained more from the MPT than could have been thought possible last November when the talks opened.

The MPT provided an opportunity to test the Eastern side’s determination to hold a conference, and the price they were willing to pay. It became apparent that the West could set a figure which would achieve its principal objectives: an agenda which would permit matters of importance to be gone into thoroughly; relatively detailed committee mandates which set forth concrete proposals; and qualifying phraseology with respect to the principal Eastern points which should make it possible to deal with any public criticism that the CSCE will be designed solely to achieve Soviet ends. In terms of Canadian interests, the following items from the draft mandates (which Ministers will be asked formally to approve at Helsinki in July) can be considered positive achievements:

a) The facilitation of freer movement is mentioned in specific terms.

b) “Particular attention” is to be paid to family contacts and regular meetings, to family reunification, to marriage between nationals of different states, and to travel for personal reasons.

c) Proposals are to be prepared “to facilitate the freer and wider dissemination of information of all kinds”.

d) The outline of principles for relations between European states includes language which, if followed in a final document, will deny the Brezhnev doctrine of limited sovereignty.

e) A satisfactory formulation of a mandate on “confidence-building measures” will include a commitment to study the question of prior notification of major military “movements” in addition to modification of the more restrictive “manoeuvres”.

Although the WPO side will, by the holding of the CSCE, gain one of its principal objectives, the Western side has ensured that no commitments are implied by the mandates which will give so much to the other side that there will be serious difficulties in drafting conference documents. For example:

a) A separation of “inviolability of frontiers” as a principle is qualified by words which require accord with U.N. principles.

b) “Self-determination of peoples” is qualified in the same way.

c) On the economic side, objectionable Soviet terminology has been replaced by relatively bland mandates which would provide a basis for useful co-operation in this field.

d) The MPT did not accept the Soviet qualification in the human contact mandate of respect for state laws: this, for the public, would have amounted to a negation of the whole mandate.

For the foregoing reasons, it would seem reasonable to agree at the final plenary MTP session, to transmit the mandates to Governments. Accordingly (if you agree that this procedure is appropriate), as soon as the final documents are received, a memorandum for Cabinet will be prepared for your signature, requesting approval of the recommendations, and of the general line of policy to be followed at the first two stages of the CSCE.

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