Cable from Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko to USSR Ambassador to Cuba Alekseev

You should meet comrade Fidel Castro and tell him the following:

"In Moscow they have received information from comrade Zorin regarding U Thant's proposal to the Cuban representative at the UN about the possibility of his trip to Cuba and granting him [and] accompanying aides and experts an opportunity to see themselves that work on creating launchers, characterized by Americans as offensive weapons, had stopped.

Moscow adheres to the opinion that U Thant should be given a positive answer to his appeal. If the Cuban friends share this view we shall inform comrade Pavlov [Pliyev] and give him corresponding instructions about access to launchers for U Thant and accompanying persons.

As is generally known, U Thant made a proposal so that representatives of the International Red Cross (IRC) were allowed to visit Soviet ships going to Cuba in order to ascertain that there are no weapons, seen by the American administration as offensive. We sent instructions to our representatives to the UN in order to give consent to that suggestion, bearing in mind that transportation of the IRC to the Soviet ships will also be done on Soviet vessels or ships of neutral countries.

We would like to inform you that ships going to Cuba right now do not carry any weapons."
Telegraph the report on the fulfillment of these instructions.

A. GROMYKO