Office of the Historian

43. Notes on Telephone Conversation between Rusk and Cleveland, September 11

September 1, 1961
[Facsimile Page 1]

The Sec asked if he saw the Niact from Leopoldville about the talk with Linner about Katanga. C said no. It’s 509. The Sec thinks this attitude of Linner’s is unacceptable particularly when he talks about taking action there to throw out Belgians working there on various administrative jobs. He is not playing completely clear with the SYG because he does not want his hands bound too tightly. He is not a sovereign state and we have a lot at stake. C thought it was extreme in Katanga even though there was provocation. The Sec said to look at it and he thinks we should have a serious talk. He is not the responsible party here and we have a tremendous stake here—we expect to be kept informed and expect the SYG to be informed. If you can mask it in a friendly way, fine.

C said they have a memo in the last stages of production on UN angles of the testing thing. ASchlesinger talked with C and said he was talking with the Pres about it and the Pres was interested in the SC and wanted to see what kind of a resolution it would be. S asked Stevenson to draft it. C asked S to stay in channels and he agreed. We will have a res and the memo will recommend that we immediately launch it on a contingency basis but do so by consulting with the Br and Fr in the next day or so. The other part of this problem is if we make too much of a decision about testing which is to start preparing and maybe announcing this and make a statement that we are going to test and get in the same category as the Russians, this would cause difficulties for our UN ploy. The Sec said he has misgivings on it. C thinks we can go ahead unilaterally and still get world opinion mobilized against the Russians if we do it right. The Sec is worried about getting over the week end. We may need the SC for Berlin. C said that is not inconsistent. The Sec said not really but it might appear we were trying to overdo it if we took two at the same time. C did not seem to agree. The Sec said he would be glad to see him later.

  1. Resuming testing: U.N. state of play. No classification marking. 1 p. Department of State, Rusk Files: Lot 72 D 192, Telephone Conversations.↩