Office of the Historian

641.74/6–1753: Telegram

No. 1188
The Secretary of State to the Embassy in the United Kingdom1

top secret
Washington, June 17, 1953—7:28 p.m.

8013. From the Secretary to the Ambassador. Recently President sent Prime Minister message concerning situation in Egypt, and received reply, copy of which you saw in Washington. President believes conversations with Prime Minister will be more effective than continuation of cabled correspondence and following is given to you as background to assist in reaching understandings.

President is sending to you as Deptel 8011 reply for Prime Minister, and it is expected that you will carry on conversations in amplification of that message, and keep us informed as to results.

We believe best interests of all will be served if British-Egyptian discussions are promptly resumed in Cairo. Clearly Prime Minister does not feel as strongly on this point as we do. This difference probably arises from fact our official reports regarding Egyptian attitudes do not agree with London estimate of situation. Whereas Prime Minister apparently believes Egyptians are weakening, we consider they are merely marking time to see whether there is any hope of resuming negotiations before they attempt guerrilla campaign.

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Prime Minister’s latest message to President remarked that he had no objection to our advising Egyptians to take initiative in resuming discussions. While we believe these discussions should be resumed, and are willing to be helpful in making them possible, we feel that it would be futile to do so if British stand firmly on Case A2 with only “certain concessions of form”. Assurance that British negotiators would be accorded flexibility mentioned below would give us a reason to make appropriate proposals to Egyptians even though we would seek to avoid giving to Egyptians any impression that British position had changed.

Prime Minister’s message frequently refers to “Agreement” between his Government and ours. As stated Deptel 5989, Mar 9,3 purpose of agreement is “to divert attention from technical points listed under alternatives in London papers and to focus attention upon implication of various cases as described in that paper. In brief, implications of Case A as listed in paper would be that working base would be immediately operable in event of war and in Case B2 it would take sixty days to reach same operating conditions”. Although we continue regard Case A as optimum objective, recent Anglo-Egyptian negotiations and reports from Cairo indicate Case A completely unacceptable to Egyptians. In accordance with agreement we should therefore fall back towards Case B striving for any improvements which might be obtainable. As stated in Deptel 5989 negotiations might usefully concentrate on obtaining base maintenance arrangements which would permit reactiviation in shortest possbile time (maximum 60 days), instead of adhering strictly to technical arrangements listed under various cases in London papers. Department was informed by Eden Mar 9 of Prime Minister’s agreement to procedure described above. If this is agreement to which Prime Minister now refers in his message to President, and if his negotiators have even limited degree of flexibility indicated above, then we would gladly urge Egyptians to resume talks.

We note in Sir Brian’s memorandum apparent misunderstanding of President’s message. “Private undertaking” by Egypt on availability of Base, which President mentioned in paragraph 4 of his message, was to serve as interim guarantee pending conclusion of formal agreements which would be made public. These formal agreements would be concluded as result of discussions which he visualized in his paragraph 5 and which would be held as soon as feasible. We felt that agreement with Egypt alone was more practice [Page 2101] cable than broader agreement on M.E.D.O., which we think we cannot obtain in near future. We agree with Sir Brian on disadvantages of private undertaking of any duration.

Dulles
  1. Repeated to Cairo as telegram 2372. Drafted by Burdett and approved by the Secretary of State.↩
  2. See Document 1061.↩
  3. Printed as telegram 1785 to Cairo, Document 1117.↩
  4. See Document 1061.↩