306. Memorandum From Secretary of State Shultz to President Reagan1
[Omitted here is material unrelated to Tunisia.]
2. Tunisian Defense Minister. Ken Dam, Bill Schneider and Dick Walters met with Tunisian Defense Minister Baly today.2 The Minister argued that the military threat to Tunisia from Qadhafi was mounting and that President Bourguiba counted on the US to supply enough security assistance for Tunisia to finance the military equipment it had agreed to purchase from the US. The Minister was told that Tunisia was a close friend whose security remained very important to us but that Congressional action on our request for security assistance would probably preclude extending this year all the aid for which the Tunisians were asking.3 (C)
[Omitted here is material unrelated to Tunisia.]
- Source: Reagan Library, George Shultz Papers, President’s Evening Reading, January–March 1983. Confidential.↩
- Records of these discussions are in telegram 23456 to Tunis, January 26. (Department of State, Central Foreign Policy File, Electronic Telegrams, D830046–0772)↩
- In his personal record of his meeting with Baly, Dam wrote: “One meeting which may have significance for the future was a meeting with the Tunisian Defense Minister, who came to complain about our present level of foreign aid and justified his complaint by the assertion that Libya was getting very close to a major incursion into Tunisia. This may very well be the case, and frankly, it is not the executive branch which is unable to deliver the level of military assistance to Tunisia that we had already promised. The result of our present embarrassment vis-à-vis Tunisia is simply the fallout of a Congressional budget process where foreign assistance bills do not seem to get voted on by the Congress.” (Personal Note Prepared by Dam, January 20; Department of State, Executive Secretariat, S/S–I Records: Deputy Secretary Dam’s Official Files, Lot 85D308, Personal Notes of Deputy Secretary—Kenneth W. Dam—Oct. 1982–Sept. 1983) During a January 21 meeting with Weinberger, Baly repeated his “previously stated concern in regard to the seriousness of the Libyan threat to Tunisia.” He “pleaded for increased grant aid saying that Tunisia is as much threatened as other countries which receive a large portion of assistance in grants. ‘Tunisia is in the advance front of the Free World and defends also the interests of the US.’” (Memorandum of Conversation, January 26; Washington National Records Center, OSD Files, FRC 330–85–0023, 1983 Official Records (Secret & Below) of the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense, and the Executive Secretary to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense, Box 25, Tunisia 1983)↩