330. Minutes of the Secretary of State’s Staff Meeting, Washington, May 9, 1974, 8 a.m..1 2
The Secretary’s 8:00 a.m. Staff Meeting
Friday, May 9, 1975
PRESENT:
- THE SECRETARY OF STATE — HENRY A. KISSINGER
- D - Mr. Ingersoll
- M - Mr. Eagleburger, Acting
- C - Mr. Sonnenfeldt
- AF - Ambassador Mulcahy, Acting
- ARA - Mr. Rogers
- EA - Mr. Habib
- EUR - Mr. Hartman
- NEA - Mr. Sober, Acting
- INR - Mr. Hyland
- S/P - Mr. Lord
- EB - Mr. Enders
- S/PRS - Ambassador Anderson
- PM - Mr. Goodby
- IO - Ambassador Buffum
- H - Ambassador McCloskey
- L - Mr. Leigh
- IATF - Ambassador Brown
- S/S - Mr. Springsteen
- S - Mr. Bremer
[Omitted is material unrelated to the Philippines.]
MR. HABIB: Well, there is another question, and that is Philippine concern over the Paracel Islands. Those islands are disputed between the Republic of China, PRC, the Vietnamese and the Philippines. And there are a whole bunch of islands, with different people sitting on different islands. I haven’t got it all sorted out yet, but I will have shortly. And they have disputed claims. And of course the Filipinos now are worried, with what is going on in Vietnam, that somebody might try to assert claims to islands on which they presently sit, and have raised the interesting question as to whether or riot they would invoke SEATO in the bilateral mutual security treaty. And of course the answer is we don’t like to have such things invoked in disputed areas.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: All another country has to do [Page 3] is dispute an area —
MR. HABIB: No, These islands have been disputed for years. Of course, the logical way would be the International Court.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: Before you start declaiming to the Filipinos about the defense treaty, I want to hear about it.
MR. HABIB: Yes, sir. As a matter of fact, that is another cable that I took out — any declaiming about the treaty.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: I don’t want Sullivan to give lectures on legal obligations, either, on his own.
MR. HABIB: No.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: You wouldn’t bet that he hasn’t done it already.
MR. HABIB: He did the right thing.
SECRETARY KISSINGER Which is what — that we don’t like to invoke treaties?
MR. HABIB: When they raised it with him, he just sort of set the whole problem aside by discussing the problem of disputed territories per se.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: Therefore making exactly the point that you just made here.
[Page 4]MR. HABIB: Well, let me —
SECRETARY KISSINGER: He raised the philosophical issue of whether we —
MR. HABIB: Right. And the reason I am raising it with you is I think —
SECRETARY KISSINGER I haven’t thought it through. But I know I don’t want Sullivan to jump the gun.
MR. HABIB: We will send you a paper.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: No. You tell Sullivan to shut up. Then you send me a paper.
MR. HABIB: Sullivan is asking us for our views.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: I know Sullivan. I do not want him to lecture the Philippine Government. There is enough uncertainty out there now. I don’t know the facts on this island business.
MR. HABIB: We will get them to you.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: Although the fact that there are Philippine troops on it could not have been a secret from us for the last twenty years.
MR. HABIB: They are on some and others are on others. This is a long-standing —
SECRETARY KISSINGER: That’s right. I remember it came up once before.
[Page 5]MR. HABIB: But you wouldn’t want to —
SECRETARY KISSINGER: I wouldn’t know what I want until I have studied it.
MR. HABIB: All right. We will keep Sullivan quiet.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: He has probably done it already.
MR. HABIB: No.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: Oh, yes. If you give a lecture on the nature of obligations in disputed territories to people that are nearly as intelligent as we are, they draw only one conclusion, especially in the present circumstances. Especially since we don’t even know whether it is a genuinely disputed territory or whether someone is just disputing it.
MR. HABIB: No — this has a long history.
SECRETARY KISSINGER: I don’t like policy made that way in this atmosphere, with a country towards which we have a defense treaty.
All right.
[Omitted is material unrelated to the Philippines.]
- Source: National Archives, RG 59, Transcripts of Secretary of State Kissinger’s Staff Meetings, 1973–1977, E5177, Box 3. Secret. According to the summary outline that precedes the minutes, “Secretary wants to be advised before we discuss application of defense treaty with Philippine Government. Amb. Sullivan should not raise this subject.”↩
- Kissinger and his staff discussed Philippine claims to the Paracel Islands.↩