160. Editorial Note
On August 2, 1965, President Johnson discussed the contretemps that had developed with Pakistan over the postponement of the Pakistan consortium meeting in a telephone conversation with Secretary of State Rusk. Johnson was at his ranch in Texas and Rusk was in his office in the Department of State. In a conversation that also dealt with Vietnam, Rusk assured Johnson that the pledge the United States had made in the Indian consortium meeting in June represented the fulfillment of a prior commitment, and differed in that respect from the new commitment contemplated with respect to the Pakistan consortium. After some additional discussion of the problem, relating in good part to an assessment of the Pakistani response to the postponement and the steps that could be taken to restore relations to a more normal basis, Johnson referred to a number of suggestions made to him by William B. Macomber, Assistant Administrator of the Bureau of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs in the Agency for International Development. In response to those suggestions, Johnson said he had decided “we ought to take every means, direct and indirect, one, to tell him [Ayub] to quit trying us in the newspapers with his speeches, two, to stop the construction [of additional facilities at Peshawar] if that was the judgment of the government, three, to tell them that they were welcome and we were ready to talk to them as soon as the Congress had acted, fourth, that we have not played any different policy with them than we have with any other government, that while we had tentative commitments before, we had not cancelled them and we were not cancelling his for this year but we were not making any new ones.” (Johnson Library, Recordings and Transcripts, Recording of a Telephone [Page 322] Conversation Between President Johnson and Secretary Rusk, August 2, 1965, 10:33 a.m. (Texas time), Tape F65.01, Side A, PNO 137. A transcript of this conversation is ibid., Transcripts of Telephone Conversations, Alpha Series, Dean Rusk. The transcript bears the heading “President Johnson’s Notes on Conversation with Secretary Rusk.” A slightly different transcript, bearing the same heading, but misdated July 31, is ibid.