347. Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in Portugal0

136. Eyes Only. Personal for Ambassador from Secretary. The moment is fast approaching when negotiations will begin with the Portuguese Government for continued use of Azores base facilities during peacetime. Present agreement expires at end of this year. As you are aware, we regard these facilities as of very great importance to our national security interests and are anxious to obtain renewal if possible.

At the moment our prospects for doing so are problematical. They might be much better were we willing to back away from the position we have taken on the right of the peoples of the Portuguese territories to self-determination, but this we have no intention of doing.

There will be some unpalatable things to be said to the Portuguese during the months to come, but wherever possible we intend to balance these with attempts to be positively helpful to them. I wish to give them every possible chance to work themselves out of the corner into which they have been put by a combination of their outmoded colonial policy and the strongly-expressed anti-colonial policy of their Afro-Asian critics.

During these negotiations, it will be highly important that we all watch closely whatever we say or do which might affect the Portuguese attitudes, as well as attitudes Afro-Asian Countries. I am asking all the [Page 946] people in the Department and in the field whose responsibilities touch even collaterally on this problem to help me get this job done if it can in fact be done.

I request that during this period statements on Portuguese problems be checked with Department.

Rusk
  1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 611.53/9–1562. Confidential. Drafted by Starrs (WE); cleared with Tyler, Meloy, and NEA; and approved by Rusk. Also sent to USUN, New Delhi, and Paris. Attached to another copy of the source text is a memorandum from Tyler to Rusk, September 14, which stated that the telegram was occasioned by a speech Galbraith had given on August 8 on Goa and the Portuguese colonial question which was angrily attacked by Nogueira. Tyler believed that the speech “opened a wound in Portugal that may have begun to heal” and argued for the need for speeches on these topics to be cleared with Washington. (Ibid., 611.53/9–1462)