811.2390F/11–1849: Telegram
The Ambassador in Saudi Arabia (Childs) to the Secretary of State
672. Military Survey Group received with me in final audience by King yesterday and left early this a. m. for Dhahran. Group plans emplane Dhahran for US twentieth.
King informed me in private audience yesterday he was pleased with. Mission’s work but felt it better to withhold any specific comments on Mission findings until they had been considered in Washington. Mission has made excellent impression and I consider O’Keefe and members his group deserve greatest praise for thoroughness their survey and excellent working relations they established with Saudi group officers accompanying them.
I felt it extremely impolitic for me to press SAG for any other comment on Survey’s findings than those made to me by King that he found principles in general satisfactory. To have pressed for more, might have carried an implication of our readiness to implement findings which I thought it most wise to avoid.
No one has raised with me any question of implementation findings and I find, as I had assumed in Washington, SAG apparently unaware developments MAP legislation referred to Deptel 407, October 15 and both Hill and I have carefully avoided any reference to this situation.
I do not need to emphasize to Department deplorable effect on our political relations with SAG which would ensue if any eventual impasse [Page 1623] reached as regards extension some form military aid to SAG in connection long-term lease DAF.1
Sent Department, repeated London 98, Dhahran 206.
- Fuad Hamza presented Ambassador Childs with a memorandum on November 21 which included a request for immediate action on the part of the United States to strengthen the position of Saudi Arabia, either by the conclusion of a political treaty or by facilitating military aid. Highlights of the memorandum were transmitted to the Department in telegram 684, November 22, from Jidda (711.90F/11–2249); the full text was transmitted to the Department in despatch No. 232, November 23, from Jidda (890F.00/11–2349).↩