Office of the Historian

751J.551/2–1254

Memorandum of Conversation, by the Officer in Charge of French-Iberian Affairs (McBride)

confidential
[Washington,] February 12, 1954.

Subject:

  • Offer of South Korean Troops to Laos.

Participants:

  • Ambassador Bonnet, French Embassy
  • Mr. McBride, WE

Ambassador Bonnet called last night in a state of some agitation to protest against a statement which had appeared over the UP ticker during the afternoon attributed to a spokesman of the Department of Defense to the effect that the Laotian Government had requested troops from South Korea to fight the Viet Minh. Ambassador Bonnet said this statement was doubtless based on an article by a Mr. Lucas which had appeared in the Washington Daily News earlier in the day and which alleged the Laotians had made such a request. The Ambassador said he and his government were of course used to these falsifications appearing in the US press but that he thought having a Defense Department spokesman quote such a fabrication was going too far. He added that the Laotian Government had certainly never in fact requested troops from President Rhee, and that the latter was of course offering them for his own political ends. He said that in his own view the acceptance of any such proposition would be the best invitation imaginable to the Chinese Communists to intervene in force in Indochina.

After speaking with Mr. Bonbright and EUR/P on this question and after Mr. Cox1 spoke to Major Minton, I called Ambassador Bonnet back this morning to inform him that a Department officer had called the appropriate officer in the Pentagon and taken him to task for his error. The Ambassador indicated that he had merely wished to call our attention to this incident, which he hoped would not be repeated. [Page 1041] He said that he was not asking any formal retraction because he believed it would do more harm than good, and also because Paris had issued an unequivocal statement today which made it clear France was not disposed to have any South Korean troops fighting on her side in Indochina because of the critical danger it would cause of open large-scale Chinese intervention.

  1. Henry B. Cox, Public Affairs Officer, Bureau of European Affairs.↩