316. Staff Notes No. 227, Prepared in the White House1
1. Clarification on US Aid to Yugoslavia.2—State has informed our Embassies concerned that no decisions have yet been taken with respect to ultimate action on the main P.L. 480 program for FY 1958 or on special economic assistance for Yugoslavia. Meanwhile, programs for technical cooperation, exchange [of] visitors and military assistance are going forward as programmed. Aircraft scheduled for November delivery will also go forward; a formal request for the suspension of future deliveries has not yet been sent to Defense. The negotiations which began in Belgrade on October 11 on a supplemental P.L. 480 program are being continued. We informed the Yugoslav Ambassador last week that we wished to clarify recent unfortunate press statements to the effort that a decision had been [Page 799] made to cut off aid to Yugoslavia. We said that as a result of recent developments, we needed to review the Yugoslav aid situation, particularly as to timing, and noted that while no decision had been reached, the immediate result was that we could not proceed with P.L. 480 negotiations for FY 1958 as soon as we had previously indicated to the Ambassador.(S)
[Here follows discussion of subjects unrelated to Yugoslavia.]
- Source: Eisenhower Library, Whitman File. Secret. The source text bears the President’s initials.↩
- The President and Secretary of State Dulles discussed the question of cessation of aid to Yugoslavia at a meeting on October 28. Dulles’ memorandum of the conversation reads in part: “The President said that he had noticed reports in the papers that we were planning to cut off assistance to Yugoslavia. He suggested that we should go slow about this as we did not want to force the Yugoslavs against their will into a greater dependence upon the Soviet Union. I said that at least some of the stories in the press seemed to have derived from Italian sources which were always hostile toward Yugoslavia. I said that while we felt that it was useful to give the Yugoslavs a sense of our dissatisfaction of their recognition of East Germany, we had not in fact decided to cut off aid, and this whole topic was under advisement.” {Ibid., Dulles Papers, Meetings with the President)↩