794A.5 MSP/12–154: Telegram
No. 421
The Ambassador in the Republic of
China (Rankin) to the Department of
State
369. Pass Defense for Assistant Secretary McNeil. Taipei’s 340, paragraph B–5–F.1 With Acting Foreign Minister also present, Chiang yesterday discussed with me various questions raised in lengthy telegram sent from Washington by Foreign Minister Yeh after his November 24 talk with Assistant Secretary McNeil re military aid.2
President asked that his views be repeated to all concerned. First priority should be given to training additional manpower, to take precedence over all other categories of aid. I inquired whether he referred to bringing existing infantry divisions up to strength or to expansion of reserve training program. He replied this was relatively immaterial so long as total trained manpower pool expanded.
Minister Yeh’s telegram went on to give various figures he had obtained in Washington including breakdown of “additional” $100 million proposed in Bridges’ letter to Stassen3 and various amounts FY 1954 funds reallocated to Free China from Indochina, et cetera. I found it difficult to answer President’s queries since we had no firm figures for basic FY 1955 MDAP allocations. Do latter total $83 million or $150 million or some other figure? Question is: Bridges’ $100 million, et cetera, are in addition to what? It would be most helpful if we could have early confirmation or correction of figures quoted in referenced paragraph of Taipei’s 340.
- See footnote 2, Document 395.↩
- No record of this conversation has been found in Department of State files.↩
- See footnote 2, Document 297.↩