OCTOBER 1979 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY NOTE.-Sections of this committee print, originally classified secret, have been deleted at the request of the Department of State. Certain of these deletions are indicated by the notation "[Deleted]." Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Washington, D.C. 20402 VII IX 1 8 17 C. NATO and Warsaw Pact Theater Nuclear Weapons. D. Statements on SALT by a Special Delegation from the North LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL Hon. JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Chairman, Subcommittee on European Affairs, U.S. Senate. September 28, 1979. DEAR MR. CHAIRMAN: The enclosed report was prepared after we returned on June 9 from more than two weeks in Europe where, at the Subcommittee's request, we examined the question of Allied attitudes toward the SALT II agreement. Although the Treaty was not signed by Presidents Carter and Brezhnev until the June 18th ceremonies in Vienna, its essential terms were already well known in Europe by the time of our trip. In seeking a representative sample of informed West European opinion, we concentrated on obtaining the views of three key Allies-the United Kingdom, West Germany, and France and supplemented those findings by meeting with NATO officials in Brussels and with NATO parliamentarians attending the semi-annual session of the North Atlantic Assembly in late May in Oslo. During the trip, we interviewed-sometimes formally, sometimes informally-scores of government officials, parliamentary leaders, and informed European and American observers. Whether formal or informal, each interview followed a standard procedure. We first declared our purpose and gave our guarantee that the discussion was "not for attribution." On that basis we then sought-and to our satisfaction obtained-candid appraisals of SALT Il in its military and its political context, including its impact on NATO theater nuclear force modernization planning and on Salt III options. Before the trip we obtained extensive briefings in the Departments of State and Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency. From those discussions we acquired useful background information on the interplay within NATO which occurred as SALT II evolved and which is now occurring on the issue of theater nuclear force modernization in Western Europe. We also developed the description of U.S.-Allied interaction on SALT II-as seen from the official American perspective-which appears as an appendix to this report. Our European interviews began in Oslo, where John Ritch, as Secretary of the Senate Delegation to the North Atlantic Assembly, was able to discuss SALT with well-informed parliamentary representatives from many of the NATO countries. In London the two of us met key officials in the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defense, the directors of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the Royal United Services Institute, and a number of prominent European and American journalists versed in NATO affairs. We then joined you in Bonn for your extended talks with Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Defense Minister Hans |