Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, Suez Crisis, July 26–December 31, 1956, Volume XVI

643. Memorandum of a Conversation, Ambassador Dillon’s Residence, Paris, December 10, 1956, 9:45 a.m.¹

USDel/MC/1

Paris , December 10, 1956, 9:45 a.m.

PARTICIPANTS

• United States
  • The Secretary
  • William Macomber
• United Kingdom
  • Mr. Selwyn Lloyd
  • Dennis Laskey

SUBJECTS

• UK Concern over “Unconditional” Suez Withdrawal

After the usual amenities, Mr. Lloyd opened the conversation by saying that his Government had done an “extraordinary thing” in that it had agreed “because the U.S. demanded it” to come out unconditionally from Egypt. He added parenthetically that as the Secretary knew the sterling area also had a good deal to do with this decision.

He then said that the UK salvage fleet had to “up-hook” on Wednesday unless something was done about it. He said the fleet had to leave by Wednesday (or shortly thereafter) to maintain the evacuation schedule. The reason for the early departure was that the ships were rather unseaworthy and that a good deal of time had to be allowed for their transit. Mr. Lloyd said that the UK could not, as had been suggested, leave the ships behind and simply take out the crews. He thought it was ridiculous taking this equipment away when it could be extremely helpful in clearing the Canal. He said the UK would be willing to have the crews wear civilian clothes rather than their military uniforms. The UK would also agree to all guns being removed from the ships (he doubted there were any), have a UN flag fly on the ships and to have UN observers aboard the ships. He said that he had sent a message this morning to all of the Canal User Governments calling their attention to the imminent departure of these ships.

Mr. Lloyd next reported that Hammarskjold had told him that Fawzi’s attitude with regard to the exchange of correspondence interpreting the six principles for settlement of the Suez Canal problem had stiffened.

Mr. Lloyd next discussed his concern over British assets in Egypt. Though no state of war had been declared against the British, the Egyptians had sequestrated all British assets in Egypt. The Secretary asked if the Egyptians justified this action as an offset to the damage which the British had done in bombing Port Said. Mr. Lloyd replied that the Egyptians had given no reasons for their action. He said that as a matter of fact certain Belgian assets had been sequestrated and also certain Egyptian assets as well. Mr. Lloyd said in this regard that the Egyptians appeared to be using the present situation in Egypt to act more and more like a Communist regime. Mr. Lloyd added that Egyptians were “turning out” all British civilians. He said that his Government did not expect to be able to do anything about this but they felt it essential that British property be looked after. Mr. Lloyd then raised again his great concern over the British withdrawal without first negotiating a settlement on the future of British assets. He conceded that the problem of these assets had inherent in it great legal complications. He said that what was needed at this time was an agreement with the Egyptian Government that these problems would be referred to some kind of arbitration procedure. He said at the same time he felt that there should be some indication of the future of the Canal before the British withdrew.

Mr. Lloyd said there was one exception to his statement that the British were withdrawing without obtaining any conditions from the Egyptian Government. There had been a rumor that the Egyptians were planning as soon as the British had withdrawn to declare war on the UK and having done this block passage of British ships through the Canal. Mr. Lloyd had raised this with Hammarskjold who in turn obtained a commitment from the Egyptian Government that it would not do this. Mr. Lloyd stressed that this was the only condition they had obtained in connection with the playing of the one card they had to play, i.e., their withdrawal from Egypt. He also said parenthetically at this point that withdrawal was the only card he thought Israel also had to play. Mr. Lloyd said that of course the UK had “not quite played” that card. He then discussed briefly the delay that the French had asked for until after their debate in the assembly in the middle of this month. It was agreed that this delay would not cause serious difficulties, that it could be handled as an “administrative” delay. No announcement would be made at this time but one would be made shortly before the scheduled departure time indicating there would be a further delay of several days. It was felt that the Egyptians would not be unduly concerned as they would have already seen a great deal of British equipment move out of the country.

Mr. Lloyd next briefly discussed Egyptian casualties. He said that the UK’s best estimate was that around 500 Egyptians had been wounded, that one to three hundred had been killed. He said that the majority of these casualties had taken place as a result of Egyptian violation of the cease-fire agreement. He said, however, Egypt would make extreme claims and we would be told there were 8,000 Egyptians dead “and that sort of thing”.

Mr. Lloyd then said there was going to be an “awful row” in England when it was found that the UK had withdrawn without extracting any conditions from the Egyptian Government. He asked the Secretary “How do you think the UK should go about getting these conditions before their withdrawal?” Putting it another way he said, “How should the UK now do the things, which if they had not made an agreement with the UN, they would be doing for themselves?”. Mr. Lloyd said that he had thought of asking Hammarskjold to go to Egypt to look into these matters on behalf of the British. His reasoning was that the UN had an obligation to look after these matters because of the British agreement with the UN and in lieu of the British doing it for themselves.

The Secretary prefaced his remarks by commenting on Mr. Lloyd’s opening statement to the effect that the US “had told you to get out”. The Secretary said he thought that was not an accurate way to describe what our position had been. He said the US thought that a good many of the ill consequences of the British-French action could be better taken care of by “your getting out than by your staying”. The Secretary said that the US could not alleviate all the ill consequences resulting from this action but some things could be done. He mentioned as an example the US support of sterling which he said may run up as much as $100 million. He said that we would do all we can to expedite the reopening of the Canal.

The Secretary said that he believed the initial “revulsion” on the part of the American public against the British action was subsiding. He stressed that this revulsion had initially existed throughout the country with the possible exception of certain groups on the East Coast. (In this connection he counselled Mr. Lloyd against assuming that newspapers like the New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune fairly represented American opinion on this issue. He said that the great weight of opinion in the country was quite different from that which had been reflected in the two newspapers.) The Secretary said that he thought the stage was set for the rebuilding of close relations between our two countries together with such monetary assistance as we were able to give the UK in its present difficulties. He mentioned that Secretary Humphrey had said that the run on sterling had been checked in the last few days. In this connection the Secretary thought the thing to worry about was not the economic strain on a currency but rather psychological strain. He said that once it was known the US was prepared to lend money to the monetary fund on a substantial scale, the end result might be that we would not have to lend a particularly large amount. The fact that we were willing to lend this much money might in the end make it unnecessary actually to do so. The Secretary cautioned, however, that we were facing a budget squeeze in the US. One of the reasons for this was the ever increasing defense cost brought about by the great expense of modern weapons and equipment. As a result he told Mr. Lloyd that he would find that Secretary Humphrey was going to be “still tough” on fiscal assistance matters. The Secretary said we were facing a real problem but that we would do what we could to work it out. He said the President will personally concern himself with these matters when he gets back to Washington. He said the President will develop the general theme of the necessity of cooperating with the UK in his Inaugural address and in his message to Congress.

The Secretary then said he wanted to make the following point. He wanted Mr. Lloyd to know that the US did not act as it did because “we liked the Egyptians better than we did the British”. Nothing, said the Secretary, could be more fantastic. He said the reason we acted as we did was that we were convinced that there would be little chance of establishing a world order or avoiding World War III if we acquiesced in the British action. The Secretary said that, as Mr. Lloyd probably knew, Syngman Rhee and Chang Kai-shek² had recently discussed a joint attack against the Chinese Mainland. The Secretary said that the interests which would dictate such an action by the Republic of Korea and the Republic of China were just as vital to them as were the interests to Britain and France which had led to the Suez invasion. He said that if the US did not adhere to a general position against the use of force in this type of thing we would never know where to draw the line.

The Secretary went on to say that we have no confidence in Nasser. He said for a short time after the attack we had considerable influence with him and still had a certain waning influence but he assured Mr. Lloyd that we were under no illusions about our continued popularity and influence with the Egyptian dictator. He said, however, that we were prepared today to use our influence with Nasser and to put pressure on him to clear up the kind of matters Mr. Lloyd had raised. He again stressed our lack of any illusion that we would have any continued influence with Nasser. He said that our influence had begun to wane when Nasser realized that our actions were based on principle and not any love of Nasser. The Secretary said that before he left Washington he had indicated a desire to use our waning bank account of good will now while we had it.

The Secretary then discussed the future status of the Canal. He said that one of the two last acts he had taken before going to the operating table was to direct that a US resolution be introduced in the UN which would call for the establishment of a UN committee to deal with this matter. He said however that the thinking when he left Washington was that the resumption by Hammarskjold of his informal activities would be more effective than to pursue this problem by the formation of a UN committee. Hence, for the time being the US planned to leave its resolution in abeyance. The Secretary added, however, that as time went on it would be more and more difficult to reach a settlement. He asked for Mr. Lloyd’s views on this.

Mr. Lloyd prefaced his answer by saying that he had made every effort in his public statements not to be critical of the US position during the Egyptian operation. He then reiterated the basic theme which had run through his earlier remarks. He said that he disagreed with the US position (making specific reference to Ambassador Lodge’s statements at the UN) that the UK should withdraw from Egypt without extracting pre-conditions. He said if the British public finds that the UK has withdrawn from Egypt without clearance of the Canal and without agreements with regard to British assets which have been sequestrated “and looted” there will be a wave of indignation in the UK which will be a very “messy situation” and will undoubtedly lead to a new wave of anti-Americanism. He mentioned again the undesirability of having British salvage ships and equipment leaving on Wednesday. (At this point the Secretary asked what arrangements were being made for paying for the clearance of the Canal. Mr. Lloyd said that if the British had been allowed to do it they would have paid for it.)

Mr. Lloyd then asked, “Should not Hammarskjold go to Egypt?”. He mentioned that Fawzi was leaving New York for Cairo tomorrow and indicated he thought Fawzi was a good influence. The Secretary said that he could not give a definite answer to this question without consulting his colleagues. He said that in general he agreed that the Egyptians should be pressed on the matters Mr. Lloyd had mentioned before the British withdrawal is complete. He said he realized this would be difficult to do because of the dilatory tactics of the Egyptians with which Mr. Lloyd was very familiar. Mr. Lloyd interposed to say that if the British troops left Egypt without any agreement on the release of the 500 UK canal base technicians now interned there, the British people would think their Government needed to have “its head examined”. However, if an agreement were reached that allowed the interned technicians to walk out the day the last British troops went out, that would be satisfactory.

The Secretary returned to the subject of the British withdrawing without extracting preconditions. He asked Mr. Lloyd if the British Government had not already crossed that bridge. Mr. Lloyd said they had, that they had given their word to the US. The Secretary said not just to the US but to the UN. Mr. Lloyd said that he believed that the UK had been much more specific as to date in the assurance to the US. He believed that the assurance to the UN had been less specific. In any case, Mr. Lloyd said that the British were publicly committed to leaving and would do so. The only question was one of “administrative delay” while an attempt was made to get certain necessary guarantees. He said that even these administrative delays could not be accomplished without the US acquiescence. He said they had given their word to the US that they would get out and unless the US released them from this commitment, they could not do otherwise. The Secretary said that the US could not release the UK from this commitment as it was on this basis that we had laid our plans for future assistance to the UK. Also he said that the only way we had been able to obtain public support in the US for these plans was on the assumption that the UK would fulfill its commitment. If we released the UK from its commitment we would be guilty of a breach of faith with our own people.

On the other hand, the Secretary stressed that we would be willing to consider putting pressure on Nasser during the remaining period that the British troops would be in Egypt. To implement this, Mr. Lloyd suggested a direct approach to Nasser by Ambassador Hare.³

1. Source: Department of State, Conference Files: Lot 62 D 181, CF 814. Secret. Prepared by the U.S. Delegation to the North Atlantic Council Ministerial Meeting.

   Dulles arrived in Paris on December 9 to attend the 18th Ministerial Meeting of the North Atlantic Council. (Dulles’ Appointment Book; Princeton University Library, Dulles Papers) The U.S. representatives at this meeting, held December 11–14, were Dulles, Secretary Wilson, Secretary Humphrey, and Perkins. The complete list of the U.S. Delegation is printed in Department of State Bulletin, December 17, 1956, p. 951. The papers of the U.S. Delegation, including position papers, memoranda of conversations, copies of telegrams sent between Paris and the Department of State, and miscellaneous papers are in Department of State, Conference Files: Lot 62 D 181.

2. Respectively, the President of the Republic of Korea and the President of the Republic of China.

3. The remainder of Dulles’ conversation with Lloyd on December 10 was recorded in another memorandum of conversation (USDel/MC/1/3). According to this memorandum, the following remarks relevant to the Suez Crisis were also made:

   “At the end of Mr. Lloyd’s call, and after the discussion of the Middle East had concluded, the Secretary said he wanted to express a general proposition. He said that generalities were always dangerous because of reservations which were often required when the problem departed from the general and became specific. However, as a generality he wished to state that the U.S. does not have the slightest compunction against using force to ‘hold what we have got.’ He said that he thought it was a very dangerous thing ever to indicate a wavering on that principle.” (Ibid., Conference Files: Lot 62 D 181, CF 814)