352. Telegram From the Embassy in South Africa to the Department of State1
98. Subject: (U) U.S.-South African Nuclear Relations. Ref: State 018587.2
1. (S-Entire text)
2. Although he had some difficulty squeezing me into his schedule, I called on Fourie today and made the approach requested reftel, using all of the talking points suggested. I had barely opened the subject with the introductory point when he interrupted with a comment that he had been thinking about the matter and wondering whether there was not something further they should be doing. He then listened to the rest of my presentation.
3. Fourie looked puzzled and said I “frightened” him when I said I thought the Department was probably thinking in terms of “a couple of weeks” in saying that we need to have the SAG decision “very soon”. He reminded me that he is going out of the country on a special mission tomorrow and will not be back until the weekend. He said that Dr. Roux was going to be in Cape Town on February 6, at which time he and Roux would be seeing the two Ministers concerned on another matter and could bring up the subject, but he really did not see how they could get a government decision in such a short time. He would nevertheless report my approach.
4. Fourie recalled that the SAG legal team had gone to Washington but he seemed not to have talked to them after their return, wondering at one point whether they had not come back after he began his holiday leave in December. In any event, he said he had the impression that the SAG was still awaiting some indication from us as to how the USG proposes to handle the question of peripheral safeguards on the U.S. plant that is to be safeguarded. He apologised and said perhaps we had already provided that information and he had not seen it yet. I said I was not aware what stage we were at in the exchange of technical information on that topic but did not believe this was something that had to precede the further discussions which we were willing to have on the technical aspects of a safeguards development program at Valindaba. He said he would check the point but understood that agreement on such a program was one of the U.S. prerequisites for a settlement [Page 1074] on the lines of the Joint Minute.3 I said I would also check the point with Washington.
5. In concluding, I noted that South Africa was in the process of changing Prime Ministers when Fourie handed me their inconclusive response of September 224 and that we had appreciated their difficulty in giving us a definitive response at that time. By now, however, following the legal talks in Washington, we assumed the new Prime Minister would have been briefed on the subject and that a decision to move forward should be possible. Fourie smiled and reminded me that a lot of time and effort had gone into other important matters, not the least of which had been the Namibia problem and the politically difficult information scandal. I said I understood but thought that the passage of further time without some real progress on this issue would make things more difficult; I suspected that people in Washington must feel the time had come to “fish or cut bait”. Fourie said he would pursue the matter as soon as he could.
- Source: National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, P840142–2048. Secret; Immediate; Nodis.↩
- See Document 351.↩
- See footnote 2, Document 343.↩
- See Document 348.↩