148. Memorandum for the Record1
Amb. Driss and his new press attache (Ferid El Mouldi) came in this morning to lay the groundwork for the coming visits of Bourguiba, Jr. and Ben Salah. After an exchange of comments on President Bourguiba’s performance during his recent trip, Driss made four points:
- 1.
- Bourguiba, Jr. has asked to see the President; he will have a letter to deliver from his father. I said I’d do my best, though I did leave us an out by mentioning the President’s busy schedule.
- 2.
- After a few generalities about the new Four-Year Plan which Bourguiba, Jr. and Ben Salah will be discussing, Driss made a pitch for a non-project loan this year. He made it clear that the Tunisians will view this as a purely political decision on the part of the US. He intimated politely that he didn’t feel our decision in this case should be governed by the economists and aid technicians.
- 3.
- He said GOT is very anxious to have a four-year commitment to support its new plan. I assured him there is no question of our continued [Page 225] aid for Tunisian development and warned that, if we would prefer not to quantify this commitment in principle, the GOT should not read our act as a loss of interest. I pointed out that our massive programs in India, Pakistan and Turkey run on the basis of yearly pledges. He suggested that the consortium framework gives those programs a continuity that Tunisia must seek bilaterally. We didn’t get into detailed discussion of the merits of multi-year commitments because Driss seemed more intent on what he was going to say next than on taking in my points.
- 4.
- He asked us to help GOT turn the Consultative Group into an effective organ. Saunders suggested it would be important for Ben Salah to give members of the Group as soon as possible the substance of the presentation he’ll make in Washington so they can do their homework. I underscored this by pointing to the trouble we’d had getting the Turks to become their own chief advocates in their consortium. Driss got the point but reiterated that everyone looks to the US for leadership.
In this connection, he said that relations with France are improving. I said we had pondered trying to persuade the French to let bygones be bygones but had decided our words wouldn’t help much. We agreed that the Germans could be helpful, especially right now in the afterglow of gratitude for President Bourguiba’s Middle East stance. I jokingly suggested the way to get De Gaulle back into Tunisia would be for us to cut off aid and he, only half jokingly, agreed.
I confined myself to reassuring him of our receptivity and interest, with the thought that we’d want to save any answers for Bourguiba, Jr. and Ben Salah.
- Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Files of Robert W. Komer, Tunisia, December 1963–March 1966. Confidential. Prepared by Komer. Copies were sent to Williams and Hutchinson.↩