Telex from the East German Embassy in Romania to Bucharest, 14 October 1983

The following Romanian positions were reinforced and clarified:

1. Based on public pressure in the US no new rockets would be stationed in Europe. For that reason at the moment it is not the time to speak about countermeasures of the Soviet Union and the measures of the Warsaw Pact. The Soviet Union should refrain from further stationing of rockets, because otherwise the tension of the international situation would only increase. The Soviet Union and the USA are both responsible for the sharpening of tensions. Both sides have anti-missile systems and are protected. Other states are not. The Soviet Union and the USA do not seriously listen to the opinions of the smaller countries, and these are therefore the ones who suffer. The SR Romania is not in favor of the countermeasures of the Soviet Union, GDR and the CzSR. Romania, especially Ceausescu, suggests that:

• The SU should give up trying to include English and French rockets, as the USA would under these conditions would be ready to continue negotiations in Geneva;
• There will never be rockets stationed on the territory of the SR Romania, either from the Soviet Union or the USA;
• The Romanian approval of the declarations of Moscow and Prague was given on the basis of the political declarations contained within them and because no provision for new deployments was included.

2. And now to the Warsaw Pact:

The further cooperation, [and] respectively, membership of SR Romania [in the Warsaw Pact] is based on two conditions:

(a) One is the conclusion of a convention between the individual member states of the WP in which it is established that no troops are permitted to enter the territory of another state without the approval of the legitimate authority of that territory;

(b)The second condition is the signature of an agreement covering all legal, material, technical, financial and local logistical questions, in cases when troops of another country, by request of the government of the territory in question of the affected state, do enter from time to time; details concerning fuel, grease and food deliveries should also be arranged in advance.

• The establishment of a unified command for the territory and the armed forces of the SR Romania had no validity in times of peace.
• In peacetime the SR Romania will not participate with troops in exercises in other countries and will not approve [the troops of] other countries exercising in Romanian territory. They should as before participate only with operative groups [staff].
• In wartime participation of Romanian armed forces in combat on foreign territory will depend on a request for assistance from the country in question.

Comrade Ceausescu then informed them that the Romanian position was presented to VP Bush during his last visit to SR Romania [in September 1983], and [Romanian Defense Minister] General Colonel Olteanu was told by Ceausescu to represent this same Romanian position at the meeting of the DMs [Defense Ministers Committee] in Berlin [in October 1983].

Signed [Ambassador Siegfried] Bock.