373. Memorandum of a Telephone Conversation Between the Secretary of State and the President, Washington, February 9, 1958, 12:40 p.m.1
SUBJECT
- Conversation with the President on the North African Situation
On February 9, the Secretary talked by telephone with the President regarding the French operations in Tunisia.2
The Secretary said that, if the President approved, he would see French Ambassador Alphand that afternoon about the incident in Tunisia. He noted that the bombing of an open town on market day was a pretty bad business. He said he did not see where we would go from here; that the French were proving incapable of dealing with the [Page 822] North African situation. He said that we started out with people in Morocco and Tunisia who wanted to be with the West but that they were being driven into the other camp.
The Secretary said that the situation was now getting out of French control; the Algerian sentiment was spreading into Tunisia and, if the conflict could not be settled, we would probably lose Tunisia, Libya and Morocco—the whole northern tier. It was a question of trying to save that or trying to save NATO. He said that he was going to tell Ambassador Caccia what we had in mind in seeing Alphand.
The Secretary said that Senator Mansfield had just made a good, sober report on North Africa,3 highlighting the dangers. He said that we were liable to lose control of the situation in Congress, noting that there was criticism of our trying to pull France out of its financial hole without doing anything for North Africa. He noted that the French have such a weak government that they do not dare to be bold and liberal.
The Secretary said that he would like to say to Alphand that he was talking to him with the knowledge and approval of the President.
In a later conversation,4 the President said that we should tell Alphand that they should disavow the action in Tunisia and offer to pay reparations. He said that we should indicate to the French that we could not carry out our fiscal aid policies regarding France without, in the last analysis, having Congressional support and we were in danger of losing that.5
- Source: Department of State, PPS Files: Lot 67 D 548, Tunisia. Confidential. Drafted by David E. Boster on February 10. The time is taken from another memorandum of this conversation. (Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, White House Telephone Conversations)↩
- On February 8, French military aircraft bombed and strafed the Tunisian border village of Sakiet Sidi Youssef in reprisal for the shooting down of a French plane over Algerian territory by anti-aircraft fire from the Tunisian side of the Algerian-Tunisian border.↩
- Reference is to United States Senate, North Africa and the Western Mediterranean: Report of Senator Mike Mansfield to the Committee on Foreign Relations (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1958).↩
- A memorandum of this 12:59 p.m. telephone conversation is in Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, White House Telephone Conversations.↩
- A memorandum of Dulles’ conversation with Alphand, which proceeded along the lines outlined above, is in Department of State, Central Files, 751S.00/2–958. Its substance was sent to Paris in telegram 2883, February 9. (Ibid., 110.11–DU/2–958) For text of the statement released by the Department of State after the meeting, see American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1958, p. 1086.↩
- Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩