From:
Minister
Date:
29 October, 1991
Cc:
Sir D Gillmore Minister (C)
mead of WianceLY Mr Tebbit
Mr Torry
DLUNG
Private Secretary
PUS's CALL ON ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR POLITICO-MILITARY AFFAIRS: 29 October, 1991
1. Sir D Gillmore told Mr Clarke that he believed we could in principle achieve what we wanted in establishing a European security and defence identity. But the process would need careful stage management. What we did at Rome would greatly influence what the EC concluded at Maastricht. Mr Clarke said he understood and agreed. At the same time we ought not to leave the French feeling the way they did after the London NATO Summit. He asked whether we had been given advance notice of the Franco-German proposals.
Sir D Gillmore said we had not.
2.
Sir D Gillmore said that there was more to question in the Franco-German proposals than the Franco-German corps, which had caught the headlines. He gave as an example the list of areas, including relations with the United States, for possible joint action by the Community. He noted that the French and Germans were saying different things about what had been agreed. Mr Clarke remarked that it was almost as though the Germans told whatever interlocutor they were speaking to at the time what that person wanted to hear. Sir D Gillmore said the trouble was that the ideas to which Kohl and Mitterrand had signed up had not been properly thought through. He repeated nevertheless that provided certain basic principles were properly spelled out and respected, there was no reason why a useful outcome to Rome and Maastricht should not be
aulilevod.
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3. Mr Clarke said he very much hoped that the optimistic scenario worked out. The Administration were in a good position perhaps better than the Embassy would have predicted a few months earlier so far as holding the line in the United States on a US military presence in Europe was concerned. On current plans, defence had to take considerable cuts. But an adequate US presence was still provided for. The danger of Maastricht was that if things went badly wrong there, when the time came for further cuts (which he plainly expected to be sooner rather than later) an invidious perception of what the Europeans were up to could play through into the congressional mood. Sir D Gillmore said that this was plainly something to be avoided. He believed furthermore that if the Americans left it would be difficult to sustain a British presence. Mr Clarke said he could understand that. There were Germans too, who wanted to minimise the foreign military presence in their country. Sir D Gillmore said that, in the final analysis, we would not sign an unacceptable IGC text. But he did not want to conclude
/this part
DELKEL