385. Memorandum of Conversation1
SUBJECT
- Yemeni Settlement
PARTICIPANTS
- Muhsin al-Aini, Ambassador of Yemen
- Assistant Secretary Raymond A. Hare, NEA
- George C. Moore, NE
Ambassador Al-Aini said that he was pessimistic about possibilities for a successful settlement in Yemen arising from the Jidda Agreement. Discussions at Haradh had proven that the only technique now suitable for an agreement would be for Faisal and Nasser to announce their exclusion of the Hamid al-Din royal family and of Sallal and his clique from political affairs in Yemen for a specific future period, perhaps five years; for the Saudis and UAR to cease their interference in Yemeni attempts to establish a future administration; and for the coming together of select Yemeni leaders—perhaps those who had participated at Haradh—without any prior “royalist” or “republican” labels in order to set up the framework of a future state. It was now clear that neither a purely republican nor purely royalist regime would be successful in ruling Yemen. It was also clear that the holding of a plebiscite in Yemen was a completely impractical concept.
In response to Mr. Hare’s question concerning the extent of support of the foregoing view among influential Yemenis, Ambassador Al-Aini indicated that a majority of the leaders and of the public, itself, held this opinion. He added that the basic problem at the Haradh Conference had arisen from attaching the designation republican or royalist to each [Page 724] of the participants, thereby giving the individuals a certain personal feeling of responsibility for supporting one side or the other. He said that neither the republicans nor the royalists, but rather the tribes, were now the deciding factor in Yemen. If Faisal and Nasser were not realistic in their acceptance of this, they were liable to find the situation removed from their hands with the Yemenis seeking help from elsewhere. In response to Ambassador Hare’s question of the meaning of “elsewhere”, he mentioned the Chinese Communists and the Russians as possibilities. Answering a further question, Ambassador Al-Aini said that Saudi and Egyptian help might perhaps be needed to set up the forthcoming conference, but only in its initial stages. The Yemenis themselves were most aware of who the real leaders of the country were. By and large they were satisfied with the representative character of the group assembled at Haradh. Subsequently he would anticipate establishment of a Presidential Council as the chief executive authority, possibly along the lines of the August Taif Agreement.
Ambassador Hare noted the present difficulty for a central government to operate in Yemen and said that it was clear the ultimate solution must be a Yemeni one, the result of efforts of a group working for the country as a whole and not just for its individual power interests. The need was for a consensus, although that was clearly a difficult thing to find in Yemen. Ambassador Al-Aini expressed the hope that Jidda and Cairo were equally as well aware of the need for a Yemeni, not foreign-imposed, solution.
In a subsequent conversation with Mr. Moore, Ambassador Al-Aini said that his reports on the Haradh Conference and his analysis of the prevailing opinion in Yemen had come from his father-in-law, Sinaan Abu Luhum, (a recent defector from the Republic who participated on the royalist side at the conference) who had recently telephoned him from Beirut. The Ambassador is considering going to Beirut himself in the near future for further consultation with various Yemenis assembled there.
- Source: National Archives and Records Administration, RG 59, Central Files 1964-66, POL 27 YEMEN. Confidential. Drafted by Moore on January 17.↩