292. Memorandum From Acting Secretary of State Stoessel to President Reagan1
[Omitted here is material unrelated to Tunisia.]
2. Courtesy Call on President Bourguiba of Tunisia. Together with General Dick Walters, I made a call today on President Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia and his Foreign Minister, Caid Essebsi.2 The President has been in Washington and Philadelphia to obtain medical treatment.3 He is still so incapacitated by his ailments that we could not have a substantive discussion. Bourguiba said he would soon return to Tunisia because of the pain he was suffering in his mouth and arm. I assume that he will not be able to stay for the meeting you have tentatively planned with him on February 10 (we will confirm this). Foreign Minister Essebsi afterward discussed Tunisia’s continuing wariness of Qadhafi. He made an anguished plea for concessional terms for Foreign Military Sales this year, placed in the context of Tunisia’s need for defense against Libya.
- Source: Reagan Library, NSC Agency File, Secretary Haig’s Evening Report (01/05/1982–01/29/1982). Secret; Sensitive. A stamped notation reads: “White House Situation Room,” and indicates that it was received in the White House Situation Room at 11:02 p.m. Stoessel was acting for Haig, who was in Jerusalem to discuss the Egyptian-Israeli peace process with Begin.↩
- A record of the conversation is in telegram 25913 to Tunis, January 30, 1982. (Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, Electronic Telegrams, D820053–0876)↩
- In telegram 187 from Tunis, January 11, the Embassy reported: “It has just been announced in a communiqué from the Office of the President signed by two physicians that President Bourguiba is ill and is to go abroad for treatment.” His ailments included “a gum infection and a partial paralysis of the right arm.” (Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, Electronic Telegrams, D820016–0138)↩