Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume E–11, Part 1, Documents on Mexico; Central America; and the Caribbean, 1973–1976

382. Memorandum of Conversation¹

Washington, February 12, 1976, 4:15–4:45 p.m.

SUBJECT

• U.S.-Guyana Bilateral Relations, UN Voting, Angola and Cuba

PARTICIPANTS

• Guyana
• Fred R. Wills, Foreign Minister
• Rashleigh Jackson, Permanent Representative to UN
• Laurence E. Mann, Guyanese Ambassador
• United States
• The Secretary
• William D. Rogers, Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs
• D. Clark Norton, ARA/CAR (notetaker)

After an exchange of greetings, the following conversation ensued:

The Secretary: I’m the one in trouble now with a sore back. Watch how carefully I have to sit down.

I have read your various communiqués and statements and already know your views on the major issues. I admired your predecessor, “Sonny” Ramphal. He was a great orator and an active participant in our inter-American meetings. I have great regard for him.

What brings you to Washington?

Wills: I am on my return from Manila and have visited with Guyanese living on the West Coast in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The Secretary: Are there many Guyanese out there?

Wills: Yes. It was my pleasure to visit with many of them in their homes.

The Secretary: Well, I am happy to have this opportunity to meet you. You have been terrifying our Ambassador, who has been striving to have good relations with your country.

Wills: I do not intend to terrify Max (Ambassador Krebs).

The Secretary: Now that I am without Moynihan, I don’t know how to deal with you.

Wills: During my trip to Africa in early January, your Ambassador in Lusaka said that you wished to have a discussion. I am sorry that I was unable to stop in the United States on my return from that trip.

Bilateral Relations

The Secretary: Well, I am happy to have this opportunity to talk with you. It is inevitable that we disagree on some things, given our different perspectives.

We have no overriding national interests in Guyana. Is there anything you want from us?

Wills: Well, Max (Ambassador Krebs) said that our relationship had soured.

The Secretary: That is the case.

UN Voting

Wills: He (Ambassador Krebs) has expressed your disappointment at our UN voting.

The Secretary: We understand that, for many nations, the UN is the one place where they can conduct diplomatic relations. We do not expect 100 percent support from any nation in the UN. Small nations can go their own way for domestic reasons. However, if a country votes consistently against the U.S. on all key issues and aligns itself always with the Soviet-Cuban position, then we must take note.

Cuba

The Secretary: As for Cuba, we were on the verge of improving relations until Cuba became involved in Angola. I am not against Dr. Castro or Cuba’s being a Communist society. We have demonstrated that we can survive with a Marxist-Leninist regime in a country of eight million people so close to us.

We are not going to accept Cuban intervention in Angola, since that could lead to another international explosion. If Castro is really interested in improving his relations with us, then he can do so without sending an expeditionary force to Africa. Until the Angolan situation, we were well on our way to normalizing relations with Cuba. The OAS was also on the way to resolving the Cuban issue.

I want you to know that we are not religiously anti-Cuba or anti-Castro.

Angola

The Secretary: I know you do not agree with us on Angola. However, we cannot dismiss the fact that Cuba has sent over 12,000 troops to fight in Angola.

Wills: We all have different domestic considerations, and too much time is spent wooing the electorate. Cuba justifies its role in Angola as a fight against apartheid.

The Secretary: Did you know that there is limited public support in Cuba for the Cuban intervention?

Wills: Really I do not want to talk for Cuba on this matter. In Guyana’s case, we abhor apartheid and have so based our position on Angola.

The Secretary: I understand your position on the question of apartheid. For Blacks, the cause against apartheid is of profound concern, and I sympathize with you.

Wills: We have different perceptions of what is happening in Angola.

The Secretary: I know what we wanted to do. In 1974, a number of African countries came to us and requested that we support UNITA. If we had decided to give our support to UNITA, they would have won. We, however, decided that it was not in our interest to become involved. We were even willing to let the MPLA win, if that was the best African solution to the problem.

In other African countries, we have supported liberation movements. We deal with Frelimo in Mozambique, and they are not pro-American or pro-capitalist. Despite our differences, we get along well with Frelimo, and I may even visit Mozambique on my African trip if they don’t lock me up.

The essential problem in Angola is the large amount of Soviet assistance being provided to the MPLA. I have recently read figures putting the level of Soviet assistance at $285 million. Do you know that this amount exceeds the total of all military assistance (or purchases) for all of Africa combined? When the USSR provides such assistance on such a massive scale, we are concerned. If the USSR had limited its assistance to approximately $10 million, we would not be so worried. It is the Soviet supply effort and Cuban troop intervention that gives us problems. Our Congress has stopped us from providing assistance.

I want to inform you, however, that the Cubans are playing with fire. Sooner or later, we will stop them.

We are also against the South African intervention in Angola.

We would have preferred to see a government representing the three factions initially emerge in Angola. We understand how African politics go and know that, as nature takes its course in Africa, the strongest faction would ultimately gain power.

Wills: The three-party arrangement in Angola had reached its limits based on the tribal connections and was falling apart before the Portuguese withdrawal.

The Secretary: UNITA had the greatest tribal support.

Wills: (At this point, Wills discussed the linkage between the Ovimbundo tribes in Zambia with those residing in Angola.)

The Secretary: I was unaware of the connection between the tribes in Zambia and Angola.

Cuban Intervention in Angola

Wills: My personal preference was for Savimbi, and when I was posted to Lusaka, I recommended that my government support him. When Savimbi requested South African assistance, my government could no longer support him.

The Secretary: Savimbi asked for South African assistance in response to the Cuban intervention.

Wills: We may differ on this point.

The Secretary: Even the United States could not dispatch 12,000 troops on the spur of the moment. The logistical planning for such an operation would take weeks.

Wills: That may be true.

The Secretary: Sending 12,000 troops some 5,000 miles is quite a logistical operation.

Wills: Maybe, you are right that the Cubans had been planning this operation for sometime.

Cuban Transit of Guyana

The Secretary: Why did you allow Cuba to use your airfield?

Wills: I do not know of any Cuban aircraft using our airport for military purposes. We have a civil aviation agreement with Cuba. I have neither seen nor heard reports that the Cubans were sending military equipment or troops through Guyana.

The Secretary: I want to tell you that they used your airfield. You are a sovereign country and do as you wish.

We do not have any defense of the South African intervention and proposed from the beginning that the South African forces should be withdrawn.

Wills: The South Africans have a long-term objective to participate in economic projects in Mozambique and Angola to establish a northern buffer zone for protecting apartheid.

The Secretary: Such a strategy is not going to succeed.

Wills: The South Africans are concerned at defending apartheid at the northern borders, and the battle is taking place there.

In Angola, we would be satisfied for any party to win which is not afraid of being independent of the NATO powers and the USSR I do not think that the MPLA will grant the USSR facilities for staging military operations in the South Atlantic, or become a lacky of the Soviets.

The Secretary: It depends on what they want from a strategic standpoint. In the cases of Guinea and Congo (Brazzaville), the Soviets already have strategic bases to use. It is not important to the Soviets that these governments always hew their line—only that the Soviets have the right to use their facilities for emergency operations.

Wills: That may be so, but I don’t think the USSR plans to use the facilities in Angola.

The Secretary: That is not true. The Soviets will be able to use the airfield and the shipping facilities in an emergency.

Don’t you think that the African countries will draw some conclusions from the large scale Soviet involvement in Angola and make some adjustments in their foreign policies?

Wills: I always believed that, in its policy toward Africa, the U.S. was not interested in assisting liberation movements. It is heartening that the U.S. is now helping, but I believe you have lost good mileage in the past by refusing assistance to some liberation movements. (Note: Wills was not specific on this point.) These groups were forced to turn to the other side and purchased their shabby goods out of necessity.

The Secretary: What do you mean?

Wills: I mean the other side filled the void by extending credits for the purchase of goods at cheap prices.

The Secretary: What is happening in Africa now means that we must become more active in Africa. It will become an area of great power rivalry.

Wills: The threat now is Rhodesia and Namibia. I agree that Africa is bound to become an area for the great powers to concentrate their efforts.

Regarding the situation in Angola, Guyana must support whatever movement opposes the South African intervention. We originally supported Savimbi. Our choice of support for the MPLA is now dictated by circumstance.

The Secretary: Well, there is nothing we can do now regarding this problem. I hope, in the future, we can talk about a problem before it becomes an acute issue in our bilateral relations.

Wills: When I went to Africa in late December, we had not really made up our minds on Angola. Upon my return to Guyana, I was quizzed on the deep South African intervention, and my government then decided to support the MPLA cause. If it had not been for the South African intervention, the U.S. stance may have been more defensible.

UN

I would like you to know that, at the UN, Moynihan has been the catalyst for a number of small Third World countries to join together in opposing the U.S. position on key questions.

The Secretary: He also attacks me.

Wills: I am aware of that. I note that he is a Democrat serving in a Republican Administration and receives great publicity for his speeches. I find it interesting that the President and you have had to support him publicly for his stands.

The Secretary: What did you expect us to do?

Wills: I understand the position in which you were placed. What worries us is that there seems to be a broad consensus in the U.S. that supports Moynihan and accepts his confrontational tactics against the Third World. At the last UNGA, we (meaning the Third World) offered compromises which Moynihan rejected.

The Secretary: What do you mean? (Turning to Rogers: Were you aware of this? Rogers nodded negatively.)

Wills: On the Zionism vote, the Africans and other Third World countries sought to defuse the issue in the Third Committee by having the question referred to the Human Rights Committee. The U.S. representative, however, gave the signal to one of the Third World representatives to kill this proposal for reasons that he would lose the propaganda advantages of having the resolution come to a vote.

The Secretary: Did you personally propose this to our people at the UN or to our Ambassador in Guyana?

Wills: No.

Jackson: This was an initiative of a number of Third World countries at the UN, who were involved in trying to defuse the situation through arranging a compromise. Our efforts were torpedoed by Moynihan’s veto.

Wills: At the Non-Aligned meeting in Lima, we (the Third World) had stopped the Arabs from pushing for expelling Israel from the UN and equating the Israeli issue with South Africa. Moynihan’s efforts, however, nullified these efforts. We also found Moynihan’s attacks on people and political systems to be unhelpful.

The Secretary: I wanted to defer the resolution.

The Secretary then answered his intercom.

The Secretary: Regarding UN voting, we understand your problems and domestic concerns. We will be mature and not expect your support all the time. If you tend to vote against us all the time, however, then we must take note of your record.

In New York last fall, there were peculiar circumstances. That situation will be remedied.

Our new UN representative will follow the broad policies that we have initiated, but in a different style. You will find a better hearing for compromise solutions that you may propose. Also, please keep our Ambassador in Guyana informed of your recommendations, and he will report your views to us unexpurgated.

Bilateral Relations

The Secretary: We have no interest in a confrontation with Guyana, and we hope that Guyana does not wish to confront us. We understand that our social and domestic views are not identical. Whatever system you may decide to follow will not undermine our structure. Likewise, we are not out to undermine Guyana. Let us act like adults and pursue a mature relationship.

I had a very good relationship with Ramphal.

Wills: I should like to inform you, Mr. Secretary, that Guyana will not allow itself to be used as a Soviet base.

The Secretary: What about a “Cuban base”?

Wills: That also goes for Cuba, and we will not permit Cuba to use Guyana to export revolution.

We are an unaligned country, and no one will dictate to us what foreign policy to follow—not you, Moscow, Peking, or Havana.

The Secretary: Philosophically, we have no problem with your unaligned position. I want you to know that we understand that we cannot expect you to support us all the time. We, however, believe that, as a true non-aligned country, you can support us from time to time rather than always adhere to the Soviet-Cuban line.

Wills: We “Black Caribbean” people see ourselves with having much in common with Cuba. There are a number of Blacks living in Cuba, with whom we can identify. We have also noted that the bulk of Cuban troops in Africa are Black. We are concerned, however, over Castro’s mistreatment of Blacks and the disadvantaged status of Blacks in Cuba.

The Secretary: Does Castro really mistreat his Blacks?

Wills: Philosophically, Castro will say no, but in reality, the Cuban Blacks have not really benefited from his revolution.

Guyana’s close ties with Cuba have been dictated by special circumstances. Our major opposition party is Marxist-Leninist in origin, and its main sources of support were from the USSR/Cuba. The present government has been forced to establish ties with these two countries to reduce financial support to the opposition. Now, the opposition has given critical support to our policies, and we cannot reverse ourselves.

We in Guyana do not look at Cuba as a Soviet satellite. We see Cuba as a country that long suffered under colonialism/imperialism.

The Secretary: The one thing that I was going to use my time in office for was to normalize relations with Cuba, and I had made the necessary speeches to gain public acceptance. It is a pity that Cuba got involved in Angola.

If Cuba does not watch itself, there is going to be a military confrontation more likely in Cuba, and not in Angola. We have done everything to improve relations, but Castro can no longer get away with sending troops all over the globe. We do not plan to fight him in Guinea-Bissau.

At this point, the Secretary rose.

The Secretary: Do you get to the U.S. very often?

Wills: From time to time, I get to New York.

The Secretary: Good. Perhaps it will be possible for us to meet again sometime and resume our discussions.

1. Summary: Kissinger and Wills discussed Guyana’s votes in the United Nations, Angola, and bilateral relations. Kissinger told Wills that the United States had no interest in confrontation with Guyana, and Wills assured Kissinger that Guyana would not become a Soviet or Cuban base.

   Source: National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, P820117–0908. Secret; Nodis. Drafted by Norton on February 13 and approved by Covey on March 16. The meeting occurred in the Secretary’s office. In telegram 186 from Georgetown, January 28, Krebs reported that Mann told him on January 27 that Wills desired a meeting with Kissinger because of “new directions in GOG foreign policy.” (Ibid., D760032–0866) In telegram 333 from Georgetown, February 17, Krebs reported on a February 16 discussion with Wills that covered the Guyanese Foreign Minister’s conversation with Kissinger. (Ibid., D760060–0929) In addition, Krebs reported in telegram 362 from Georgetown, February 20, that Wills said that he and Kissinger had not discussed economic assistance but that if the subject had been raised he would have noted that a lack of U.S. aid would tend to make Guyana “hostage” to offers of assistance from sources such as the Soviet Union and China. (Ibid., D760065–0133)