Office of the Historian

137. Memorandum From the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to President Johnson1

Washington, June 30, 1965, 1:30 p.m.

SUBJECT

  • Progress on the Pak-Indian front
1.
I have talked with Tom Mann this morning, and I think, as a result of your talk with him, the State Department for the first time has really got the signal. As Tom said to me, there has been great reluctance to believe over there that the White House meant what it said, but Tom himself has now taken hold, and I think the results will be very constructive.
2.
Three major steps are being taken now:
A.
The first is definite notice to George Woods that we want the July consortium on Pakistan postponed. This will clear the decks for serious talk with the Pakistani representative who is likely to turn up here quite soon.
B.
Tom Mann is talking to B.K. Nehru and will make it very clear to him that we think the time is ripe for a very serious talk with the Indians about the whole range of our relationships, which are a very great expense to us. Tom’s conversations will be careful and courteous, but thorough, and he will suggest to B.K. that he himself go back to India and get Shastri to designate a really high-level visitor to come over here for very serious talks.
C.
Bob McNamara is having a full review of the MAP pipeline and will have alternatives for the handling of that for discussion next Tuesday. Meanwhile there will be technical delays on all deliveries in that field. This has been the hardest spigot to get turned off, and Bob thinks there are some tough choices in the handling of it, pending the serious talks that are now in prospect with both countries. But he will have suggestions on that next week.
3.
My own conversations with State, AID and Defense make it clear to me that the message is now getting across and that Mann, McNamara and Bell all mean to conduct their business in accordance with your basic desire. This is an important change for the good.
4.

There does remain one special case which may require special treatment before we really finish talking turkey with these two governments—that is the question of food for India. I don’t see how we can reach any general agreement with the Indians in the next week or two. Yet if we do not make some interim arrangement for shipments of wheat within that time-frame, there may well be a real problem of food shortage in India which the Indians could successfully blame on us. That could bring us a lot of violent and quite unnecessary criticism, and might even give the Soviets a chance to make emergency deliveries and make us look foolish. This is what we just avoided in Egypt a couple of weeks ago.

I have told Bob Komer to prepare a contingency plan for interim wheat deliveries on a very limited basis. This plan will not be marketed around the city, but it will be available for a prompt decision in the light of what Tom Mann learns from his first hard talk with Nehru.

McG. B.
  1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Memos to the President, McGeorge Bundy, Vol. 11, June 1965. Secret.↩