740.5/9–4450
Memorandum of Conversation, by Mr. Elim O’Shaughnessy of the Office of Western European Affairs1
| Participants: | The Secretary |
| Prof. Paulo Cunha, Portuguese Foreign Minister | |
| The Portuguese Ambassador2 | |
| Mr. O’Shaughnessy |
The Portuguese Foreign Minister called today at his urgent request. He said he wanted to bring up the question of the defense and the strategic importance of the Iberian Peninsula. He fully realized the impossibility from a political standpoint of attempting to include Spain in the Atlantic Pact but on the other hand he also believed that to leave Spain completely on its own as it was at present was also quite undesirable. A middle way might be to stock pile arms in Portugal for use by Spain when the emergency arose, the furnishing of anti-aircraft defense, the improvement of Spain’s air fields, and in general to do what could be discreetly done to build up Spain’s infrastructure in order to be able to make use of her territory in the event that a rear guard action became necessary. This would be preferable to leaving Spain in a comfortable situation of neutrality, as she was during the last war, which benefitted no one but herself. In this connection, he mentioned the somewhat similar problem of helping Turkey without including it in the Pact. The Secretary asked what the Spanish view of this was. Did they wish to cooperate and were they prepared to assume a fair share of the common burden? Mr. Cunha replied so far as he knew that Spaniards were undecided on this point. He added that he did not have a mandate from the Spanish Government to discuss this and was merely expressing his own views. Ambassador Fernandes said that the Spaniards were quite unprepared and therefore not in a good military posture. He said it would be [Page 305] very helpful if technical assistance and a stock pile of arms could be put at the disposal of Spain through Portugal. The Secretary remarked that the European allies wanted to complete their line of defense as far east as possible and that any move to arm Spain would be misinterpreted as meaning that we were preparing to fix our line of defense on the Pyrenees and this would have a deplorable effect on the people of Western Europe. Dr. Cunha agreed but pointed out that there were priorities among lines of defense and that while he recognized that the first line of defense should be as far east as possible provision should be made for a rear guard action. Mr. Cunha asked whether the Secretary saw any objection to his bringing up the problem of the defense of the Iberian Peninsula along the lines which he had mentioned with his colleagues at the NAT Council. The Secretary replied that it might be useful to examine the question but that, of course, there could be no question of coming to any conclusion.
The Secretary then said that speaking of the defense of Portugal we would like to discuss the form and the manner of agreements within NAT for the use of military facilities in the Azores. We consider that the most important contribution which Portugal can make to the NAT defense is the maintenance of these facilities. He said that the matter is one that we would be anxious to deal with now rather than at the time that the emergency arose when time would be lacking to make the necessary arrangements. Dr. Cunha replied that the Portuguese military were discussing the matter with our recently arrived military mission to Portugal. He believed that the problem was being examined more constructively and that progress would be made. He added that the arrival of our military mission had been most opportune and timely.