184. Memorandum of a Conversation Between the Secretary of State and the British Ambassador (Makins), Department of State, Washington, August 5, 19551
Washington, August 5, 1955
I told the British Ambassador with reference to Centurion Tanks to Iraq as follows:
- (1)
- The Defense Department would, although faced with serious financial difficulties because of appropriation cuts, try to squeeze out for this year the offshore procurement in the UK of ten Centurion Tanks at a cost of about a million and a quarter on the assumption that the UK would match this with two.
- (2)
- We would try to sweeten this years military pot for Iraq by accelerating deliveries and perhaps by adding some fresh items.
- (3)
- That we would consider sympathetically a further contribution to the Centurion program in connection with our next years request to the Congress.
- (4)
- We understand that this action on our part is not designed to set a general pattern for the Near East but to meet a special situation anticipated to arise from the announcement of Alpha and [Page 341] the difficulty faced by Nuri in meeting Arab opposition to his participation in the Northern tier concept.
I had told the Ambassador points 1, 2, and 3 prior to talking with Anderson and Hoover, et als in my anteroom. After this talk I went back and added pointed 4 and also asked him not to inform his government of what I had said until I could clear it more definitely which I said I would do the first of next week. We should, therefore, advise him definitely and in writing along the foregoing lines by Monday or Tuesday.
JFD
- Source: Department of State,S/S–NEA Files: Lot 61 D 417, Alpha Volume 6. Top Secret; Alpha. Drafted by Dulles.↩