73. Memorandum of Telephone Conversations Between the Secretary of State in Washington and the Representative at the United Nations (Lodge) in New York, February 10, 1957, 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m.1
11:30 a.m.
TELEPHONE CALL FROM AMBASSADOR LODGE IN NEW YORK
The Sec said we were still working on it (the paper re Israel withdrawal).2 The Sec said Lodge should have a secretary in his office call to take the memo in dictation over the phone. (This was done between around noon and 12:15 p.m.)
12:30 p.m.
TELEPHONE CALL FROM AMBASSADOR LODGE IN NEW YORK
The Sec said he would take the line with Hammarskjold not that we are asking H. if this is a good thing, but that this is what we are planning to do. We do not wish to act without letting him know in advance and we are interested in his observations, but we are planning to do this. The Sec said he did not want H. to feel that we are entirely dependent on him. The Sec said this should be a great help to H. The Sec said H. would, he thought, grab at it like a drowning man at a straw; the Sec said he hoped it would be more than a straw. The Sec said it involved quite a moral responsibility for us. The Sec said if H. wants to talk to Fawzi and let him know about this thing, it would be all right. The Sec said it was probably better for H. to do it rather than [Page 120] us. The Sec said we might have a meeting of the 3 (US, H., and Egypt), but then when he saw Eban the next day it would look as though we had been doing something behind their backs. The Sec said it would be useful for Fawzi to know and to get him committed to the course we outlined, especially for the rights in the Gulf of Aqaba. The Sec said he thought as a byproduct we should get more time, they should not press the sanctions business. The Sec said this will require us to make this as a public statement, but we need a couple of days more. Eban will want to report to Ben Gurion. The Sec said that when H. sees Eban at 4 today H. should not let Eban know he knows about our memo. The Sec said he wanted that to wait till he saw Eban the next morning. The Sec said we can always explain it that the Sec had tried to see Eban first, but that E. was away in New York.
- Source: Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, General Telephone Conversations. Transcribed by Proctor. The source text indicates that Proctor could hear only Dulles’ side of the conversation. The parenthetical insertions in the source text are Proctor’s.↩
- Reference is to an early draft of the U.S. aide-mémoire; see footnote 2, supra.↩