343. Memorandum of a Telephone Conversation Between the President and the Secretary of State, Washington, October 14, 1956, 12:30 p.m.1
I wished the President “happy birthday”. He thanked me.
I then said that I thought matters had gone fairly well at the UN; that the “principles” had been adopted unanimously, and that negotiations would continue between the British, French and Egyptians under the auspices of the Secretary-General. I thought that talks would be resumed probably within about ten days and there might even be some further talks at the UN on Monday since the Secretary-General, Lloyd and Fawzi would all be there.
The President said he was relieved to hear this. He had listened to the radio news at 11:00 o’clock the night before and had been disturbed because the commentator had indicated that everything was in a state of collapse.
I said that he was probably referring to the prospective Soviet veto. I said, however, that was not an unmixed blessing and indeed the British and the French had wanted this. They had said that they could not live politically with a resolution which the Soviets would approve. I told the President that with some minor modifications we could have gotten a resolution, all of which probably would have been adopted unanimously, but that the British and the French deliberately rejected this.
I said that I felt that my statement at the closing about continuing the conversations was practically effective to assure this and that the moral effect of the adoption of the second part of the resolution by a vote of 9 to 2 was considerable.
[Here follows discussion of unrelated subjects.]
- Source: Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, White House Telephone Conversations. Secret. Drafted by Dulles. Dulles and his party left New York at 10:40 a.m. and arrived in Washington at 11:50 a.m., October 14. (Dulles’ Appointment Book; Princeton University Library, Dulles Papers)↩
- Macomber initialed for Dulles.↩