Office of the Historian

118. Memorandum of Telephone Conversation Between Secretary of State Rusk and the Permanent Representative to the United Nations (Stevenson)0

October 30, 1962, 7 p.m.

Stevenson said that Seamens [Narasimham] (?) called in. He said they had a wonderful code—they talk in Hindi. Riki [Rikhye] reported that the first session which has terminated went very badly. Castro says no intrusion or inspection whatsoever on Cuban soil by anybody. They are now adjourned to meet tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. They will do some work on him tonight and might break him down by tomorrow morning. He asked that further reconnaissance by us be held off for another day so that it would not screw the thing up. He thinks if they don’t get results tomorrow and he runs in this stone wall he will come back and call a Security Council meeting Thursday to ask for further instructions. The Cubans have refused Riki any access to inspect the sites and he has no clue as to what has transpired. Kuznetsov seemed alarmed today1 about the attitude of the Cubans, but so far as the Russians are concerned, he was confident of progress, but we would have to take a look so far as the Cubans are concerned and we would have to rUN some high level overflights unless we get a breakthrough. The Security Council thing will be awkward because the absence of an agreement of that kind would, of course, only increase the offense to the Cubans. If this is the only way out we had better have a talk with Kuznetsov and see if we can reach some sort of secret agreement and then go ahead with the Security Council agreement and confer with the Soviets. The Secretary suggested possibly the Cubans and Stevenson asked do we want to do that. The Secretary replied he did not know. Stevenson would think twice about that. There might be an interim meeting of the Latin American group on this. Stevenson is not clear in his mind who it would possibly be—perhaps Mexico.

The Secretary said he would report this to the group meeting now2 and see where we come out after the session ends. Stevenson said they were having a Delegation meeting tomorrow and he will caution them on any statements.

  1. Source: Department of State, Ball Papers: Lot 74 D 272, Telcons—Cuba. No classification marking. Rusk was in Washington;Stevenson was in New York.↩
  2. See Document 117.↩
  3. See footnote 1, Document 116.↩