Office of the Historian

317. Memorandum of a Telephone Conversation Between the Secretary of State in New York and the Acting Secretary of State in Washington, October 9, 1956, 5:54 p.m.1

Washington, October 9, 1956, 5:54 p.m.

TELEPHONE CALL FROM MR. HOOVER (one-sided)

The Sec. returned his call. The Sec. said he spoke today,2 and he thinks it was well received. The British and French were pleased. This p.m. Spaak, Belaunde and the Iranian3 asked pointed questions to Fawzi. F. made a statement which evaded the answers. Belaunde asked are you willing to deal on a provisional basis with ships going through etc. F. ducked that one. We are in trouble with the British about the Treasury regulation about paying dues because they are very anxious to get them paid to the Users Association and the Sec. thinks they will be willing to issue similar rules themselves—he does not know about the French. The crux is they want to start boats paying to SCUA before SCUA is organized to deal with Egypt. That is liable to precipitate a pretty sharp crisis. We were told today on behalf of Lloyd they would issue the requirement stopping payment to the old Company and require payment to SCUA. The Sec. thinks Picot4 is in NY now.

The Sec. said he talked with the Pres. after talking with H. yesterday.5 As far as time is concerned the Sec. sees no reason why he can’t come back to Washington for a day or so. They are going into private negotiations. Menon is here with a plan which he is trying to sell. There is a certain reluctance to deal with him. Lloyd, Pineau and Fawzi are in consultation together under the auspices of Hammarskjold and are seeing about getting talks started. The Sec. thinks it is kind of an effort to bypass Menon. Menon has something he talked over with the Egyptians that has some merit in it. Rountree had lunch with Sabri6 and thinks they are ready to negotiate. The problem is with whom and how. It has not quite crystallized yet. The next formal meeting7 is secret—Thursday8— [Page 675] 3:30 and a plenary Friday. The Sec. said today at his suggestion they had a meeting of the representatives of the 18.9 Did not do much but a good gesture and it gave the Turk10 a chance to blow off steam—he has been upset. There is another such meeting at 2:30 Thursday. The Sec. said he could come down tomorrow if desirable without prejudice here. It is a little bit of a question of scenery. If you start to go back to confer with the Pres., it looks like a crisis. We don’t have very secure telephone system here.

  1. Source: Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, General Telephone Conversations. Transcribed by Bernau in New York.↩
  2. Reference is to Dulles’ statement before the Security Council. For text, see Department of State Bulletin, October 22, 1956, pp. 611–615, or United States Policy in the Middle East, September 1956–June 1957, pp. 109–111.↩
  3. Presumably Iranian Representative Djalal Abdoh.↩
  4. Jacques Georges-Picot, Director-General of the Universal Suez Maritime Canal Company.↩
  5. No accounts of these conversations have been found in the Eisenhower Library or Department of State files.↩
  6. See Document 315.↩
  7. Reference is to a meeting of the Security Council.↩
  8. October 11.↩
  9. A transcript of this meeting, held at U.N. Headquarters at 3 p.m., October 9, is in Department of State, Conference Files: Lot 62 D 181, CF 796.↩
  10. Turkish Representative Selim Sarper.↩