890F.00/9–2849
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Ambassador in Saudi Arabia (Childs)
I had 15 minutes with the President today, and upon being received by him asked if he preferred to ask questions of me or he preferred for me to give him a thumb nail sketch of the situation in Saudi Arabia and he replied that he was on the point of saying that I do the latter. I recalled that three years previously he had received me when I went out to Saudi Arabia and he had stated that he did not know anything about my diplomatic talents but that I would need a full measure of these in the difficult days ahead. I added that if my mission had been successful in keeping the boat from being rocked it had been due less to my own talents than to the great statesmanship of King Ibn Saud.
The President interrupted to state that he was himself greatly impressed by the King and that he had gathered the King was the greatest of all the heads of state in the Middle East area.
I replied that the President’s impression in my opinion was entirely correct.
I went on to say that the King, of course, had been greatly disturbed by our Palestine policy. The President nodded his head in agreement. I said that despite his great dissatisfaction with our policy in respect to Palestine he had been enough of a statesman to recognize that there was too great a community of interest between the United States and Saudi Arabia for him to be deflected from his course of friendship with us by what he regarded as a merely temporary development.
The President commented that the King had been absolutely correct.
I said that I had myself expressed this conviction to the King, believing that it was expressive of the President’s own ideas, and the President remarked that I had been correct in so doing. I said that we had great economic and strategic interests which were too obvious to elaborate on in my survey. I did mention that we had concluded a new Dhahran Air Base agreement and that there was a secret survey mission now in Saudi Arabia which would make recommendations [Page 1615] on its return looking to the possible fulfillment of our mutual interests in the way of some mutual assistance agreement. I said that our thought was that we could work out a long term air base agreement which would provide for the training of Saudis and their military equipment on a cash reimbursable basis in a way which might serve our own interests in the defense of the base. I said that it was to be regretted, in my opinion, that there had been stricken out in the Military Arms bill a provision for making it possible for Saudi Arabia to purchase arms in this country.
The President said he felt that it had been regrettable and that a way must be found for working out an agreement with Saudi Arabia which would serve our common interests. He said he was aware of the survey mission’s presence in Saudi Arabia.
I referred briefly to my visit to the West and the inspiration it had been to view the work of the Bureau of Reclamation. I was recommending as a first step in the application of the President’s Fourth Point to Saudi Arabia that arrangements be made for the sending of a reclamation engineer and possibly for a United States geological engineer to Saudi Arabia to make a water survey as the problem was one of finding water, rather than one of harnessing existing supplies of water. The President expressed complete agreement with this suggestion, and, arising, went over to a map and inquired as to the possibility of harnessing some of the water of the Euphrates Valley for Saudi Arabia, but upon considering the map said he did not feel this was as practical as he had supposed, owing to the distance involved.
Before leaving I touched on the vital necessity to Saudi Arabia to maintain its present production of its 400,000 to 500,000 barrels of oil per day as its whole economy was based on the receipt of royalties on this basis of production. I said there had been talk of cutting production to as low as 200,000 barrels a day which would be catastrophic.
The President said that, this purpose was very much to the fore, that production had been cut in Texas, and that a study was being made looking to the adjusting of national production and that of imports. He intimated that he was glad to have the views that I had expressed.