579. Memorandum by the Director of Central Intelligence (Dulles)1
Memorandum of Conversation at the French Embassy, 16 November 1956, with Monsieur Pineau, Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Ambassador, and Monsieur Daridan of the Quai d’Orsay.
After the usual amenities during which it turned out that both M. Pineau and I had attended the Ecole Alsacienne in Paris many years ago, M. Alphand, who had been on the phone when I arrived, joined us and started in immediately to discuss the U.N. resolution on which M. Pineau had been working with regard to the committee to deal with the Suez Canal question. M. Alphand said, (apparently after having talked with the State Department and possibly others) that it seemed desirable to add an additional “neutral” member to the committee to balance off the British and French representation so that it would include, in addition to the British and French and the U.N. Secretary General and an Egyptian delegate, one additional representative to be appointed by the Secretary General.
There was then some discussion as to whether such a resolution had any prospect of being accepted by the U.N., and M. Pineau seemed to have some optimism on the subject. He remarked that he felt that our original resolution would have caused great difficulty since the General Assembly would undoubtedly have got into a wrangle as to membership, and it therefore seemed necessary to clearly designate the membership initially. Pineau remarked that any committee which did not have British and French representation, as well as Egyptian, would not include the parties chiefly interested.
[Here follows discussion of the Syrian situation.]
M. Pineau then described the pressures which had been built up on France as a result of Nasr’s Suez action, the feeling in France that after the negotiations both in London and in New York had resulted in a Russian veto and, in effect, futility, the French had reached the conclusion that we were not prepared to take any strong action against Nasr.
[Page 1136]After luncheon M. Pineau turned to me and said he wanted now to tell me in strict confidence what really had happened. On October 14 he had arrived back in Paris from New York after the U.N. meeting on the Suez Canal; on October 15, he was approached in Paris by Israeli representatives. They told him that Israel had definite proof that Egypt was preparing to move against them and that they could not wait much longer. They were therefore determined to attack Egypt; that they would do it alone if necessary but do it they would. On October 16, Eden had come over from London and the plan had been worked out among the three of them and that was that. He, in effect, apologized for not having kept us informed but said that under the circumstances it seemed to serve no useful purpose to do so. I remarked that he probably also was aware of the fact that if we had been advised we would have opposed the plan.
I asked M. Pineau whether he did not have any faith in working through the United Nations. He remarked that it seemed obvious that the United Nations had a double standard, that they acted vigorously against Britain and France in Egypt, whereas they had been impotent to do anything about the grievous Soviet aggression in Hungary; that an organization where Yemen and the United States had an equal voice tended to become a debating society and that the U.N. while it had possibly some capacity for decision after events had occurred, did not have any machinery for dealing with the gathering storm. They could only act, too late, after the storm had broken.
M. Pineau seemed to think that unless the Soviet Union was prepared to risk atomic warfare, or even initiate it, their power for overt intervention in the Middle East was limited, although he was apprehensive about the volunteer business. He and M. Daridan cited reports of large numbers of Soviet Moslem volunteers—he cited the number of 10,000—which might be ready to be transported to the troubled area of the Middle East. He recognized the logistic problem of getting them to Egypt and seemed to feel that Syria was a more likely danger spot than Egypt from the point of view of Communist infiltration and the use of volunteers.
He expressed great gratification at the speech of General Gruenther2 which had been the one bright spot in recent events and had had great effect in Europe.
M. Alphand said that they were very disturbed at the report that the Secretary was seeing Mr. Martino but had declined to see [Page 1137] M. Pineau. M. Pineau added that this put him in a very difficult situation. Either public opinion in France would reach the conclusion that M. Pineau had not desired to see the Secretary, or that the Secretary had refused to see him while seeing others, and either result would be equally bad. I said that I frankly did not know whether the Secretary was seeing Martino. M. Alphand assured me that such was the case according to information which he had just received.
Throughout the conversation which lasted about one and one-half hours, we found ourselves in agreement only on the following points:
The importance of Franco-American understanding; that the Communist menace was our greatest danger; that Syria was a potential weak point from the viewpoint of Communist penetration, and that Egypt and the Arab world could well dispense with the service of Nasr. There was some difference between us as to the degree of his rascality, and also as to the type of measures which were justifiable to effect a change. For example, when I suggested to Pineau that during the months following the seizure of the Canal, some progress was being made in undermining Nasr’s popularity and position in Egypt, Pineau vigorously dissented and indicated that he never could have been shaken by peaceful measures of this nature.
I made it entirely clear to M. Pineau that I did not deal with policy questions but that my job, as he knew, was limited to pulling together intelligence for the policy makers.
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Source: Department of State, Central Files, 974.7301/11–1756. Transmitted to the Department of State under cover of a note, dated November 17, from Dulles to Murphy which reads, in part: “I am sending a copy to Andy Goodpaster and if I get a chance this afternoon, I shall show it to Foster.
“If you think Herb [Hoover] would be interested please pass it on to him upon his return from New York.”
A copy of this memorandum is in the Eisenhower Library, Staff Secretary Records.
↩ - Gruenther warned the Soviet Union of immediate retaliation in case of an attack on Western Europe. (Telegram 2371 from Paris, November 13; Department of State, Central Files, 711.551/11–1356)↩