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ANNEX I
PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS ON THE TIMING AND NATURE OF NEGOTIATIONS ON BERLIN
I. General
1. The essential purpose of any Western program of action on Berlin must be to create a situation within which successful negotiations can take place. These might have a greater or lesser degree of formality, but would at a minimum have to provide a means of arriving at governmentally-approved agreements or understandings. Our objective in such negotiations would be to maintain the Western position in Berlin and free access thereto without paying an unacceptable price.
2. Negotiations should ideally occur at the point of maximum effectiveness of the western deterrent. It will be difficult, however, to know with any precision when this optimum point is reached, since it will largely involve the psychological state of the Soviet leadership. Until Khrushchev is persuaded, or at least fears, that the United States can, and will do, whatever is necessary to prevent his having his way with Berlin, negotiations will almost certainly not lead to an arrangement acceptable to the West.
3. From a practical point of view, however, we might find it necessary to enter into negotiations at an earlier stage. Our willingness to do this may be important to mobilizing Western support for a firm position. The pressures toward negotiations which can be generated in a situation of growing crisis are considerable. They will be particularly strong if the Soviets themselves seem to be asking for negotiations, and if, as prior to the Geneva Conference of 1959, they appear willing to withdraw the ultimate features of their threat.
II. Early Negotiations
A. Geneva-Type Conference:
4. Any negotiations which might take place within the next few months are unlikely to lead to conclusive results barring some early shift in the basic Soviet assessment of the situation. We could presumably get into such negotiations either because of the pressures
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