Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, South and Southeast Asia, Volume XV

267. Memorandum of a Conference With the President, New York, September 26, 1960, 3 p.m.¹

New York, September 26, 1960, 3 p.m.

OTHERS PRESENT

• Prime Minister Nehru
• Foreign Secretary Dutt
• Secretary Herter
• Assistant Secretary Jones
• Colonel Eisenhower

After amenities, the President expressed gratification that Prime Minister Nehru had been able to make this trip to represent India in the UN. The President said that calm voices are needed at this time. He himself had been astonished by the virulence of Khrushchev’s attack on Hammarskjold and his attack on the UN itself.² This the President considered somewhat “outside the pale.” Mr. Nehru said that everyone had been astonished at the virulence of this attack. From the structure of the speech, it appeared that this portion had been added on to a previously prepared text.

The President said that the destruction of the UN would be a terrible disaster for the world, particularly for the small nations. In 1945 he himself had been opposed to locating the UN building in New York City, but every other location had appeared to possess disadvantages. Geneva held the associations with the unsuccessful League of Nations. Stockholm had apparently also been considered. The President was not aware of anyone who really wanted it here in New York. Mr. Nehru mentioned that San Francisco had also been considered as a possible location.

The President said he had been considering a proposal to move the UN building to West Berlin. This idea had found no enthusiasm in the State Department, and he had not pushed it. He mentioned that Luxembourg might be a good location.

The President then turned to the situation in the Congo. He said that the news reverses itself every day. Mr. Nehru agreed that it is extremely difficult to obtain accurate news. The President said that Mr. Lumumba³ has been extremely difficult. For a while it appeared that Lumumba and Kasavubu⁴ were spending their time firing each other.

The President expressed mild surprise at Mr. Herter’s statement that Lumumba and Kasavubu seemed to be making an effort to get together. He conceded that Lumumba is a highly intelligent man and Mr. Herter said that he is also highly unpredictable.

Mr. Nehru described the situation in the Congo as a tough one. He emphasized the part which Belgium played in creating chaos and said that Belgium left the country in ruins.

The President then mentioned the conversation which he had had with President Olympio of Togo. Togo is a small country of 1.2 million people but is making an effort to solve its problems and is now entering into an economic union with Dahomey. The President described Olympio as a sensible man and said he had made a good impression on him. In contrast to Nkrumah,⁵ whom the President described as glib and facile, Olympio appears to think before he talks.

The President then expressed his pleasure at the recent agreement on Indus Waters reached between Mr. Nehru and President Ayub of Pakistan.⁶ Mr. Nehru agreed that it was an important step and said he had spent five days in Pakistan en route to New York. (Mr. Nehru appeared greatly fatigued during this entire conversation.) The President asked whether Ayub had been successful in moving his government from Karachi to Rawalpindi. Mr. Nehru said that he had, although the move was far from complete. Fortunately for Ayub, in matters such as this, he is able to move in a military manner. Ayub had found a location in the north of Pakistan which possessed a cooler climate, and which he considered desirable for the nation’s capital. Having found this location near the small village of Rawalpindi, he made a decision and began the move within 48 hours. Most of his government, however, is still located in Karachi. Mr. Nehru emphasized the military nature of this type of action and admitted that he himself would have extreme difficulties in taking such decisive action. He admitted that Rawalpindi is located in an attractive place. The President said that Ayub had told him of his plans to make the move gradually so as to avoid breaking the country economically. In a humorous vein, he mentioned the odors he encountered between the airport and the city of Karachi last December.

The President expressed sympathy for the death of Mr. Nehru’s son-in-law and asked whether this had been unexpected. Mr. Nehru said that it had not been expected. Mr. Gandhi had suffered a heart attack a couple of years back but had been in Parliament the day before he died.

The President asked the Prime Minister if he held any convictions as to the direction in which the world situation is going. Mr. Nehru replied that he did not. He had come to New York because he had considered this UN meeting highly important. He had been urged by many governmental leaders from other countries. Upon arrival the day before, he had found the situation in the UN worse than he had expected. He emphasized that the breakup of the UN would represent a catastrophe for all since the UN is the world’s only hope.

The President said he thought that his own speech of September 22nd had been conciliatory in nature.⁷ Even Khrushchev had admitted as much. The President wondered what would have been the reaction if he had made a tough speech. Mr. Nehru said he had not seen Khrushchev since his arrival here. He holds the hope that Khrushchev will calm down.

The President said that the African presentations to the UN have been good, with the exception of that of Ghana. He said that Hammarskjold had presented excellent defense of his stewardship as Secretary General in the course of a 10-minute speech. Mr. Nehru said he had been at the UN and had heard this speech, and that it was done cleverly. The talk had presented an indirect defense while emphasizing that the issue of the position of the Secretary General should not be brought up at this time. Mr. Nehru agreed with Mr. Hammarskjold in this matter.

The President expressed disappointment in Khrushchev’s speech to the UN, saying he found nothing constructive therein which would offer any negotiating opportunity. Frankly, he had not expected the speech to be so bad. Apparently Khrushchev desires to find how many new nations he can get committed to himself. Since he seems to have no other purpose, the situation looks bleak.

Mr. Nehru asked the President’s opinion as to the matters the General Assembly should consider. The President said the central problem is that of disarmament. Corollaries would include cessation of nuclear testing and cessation of nuclear production. He is willing to discuss any measures leading toward disarmament so long as their provisions are truly reciprocal. He placed disarmament as the overriding issue and said that the overhauling of the UN is beside the point. Mr. Nehru said the Indians regard the two issues as disarmament and Africa, to which the President quickly and emphatically agreed.

Mr. Nehru went on to describe the African problem as tremendous.

Any UN reorganization which would substitute a three-man committee for the office of Secretary General he regards as impractical. He is in some doubt as to how to approach the problem but feels that some, perhaps three, Assistant Secretaries General with deputies might be provided to Hammarskjold. He pointed out that this would not be a new innovation since we once had such positions, although they since have been abolished. Mr. Nehru said Hammarskjold has been criticized for not reinstituting these offices, something he could do without additional legal authority from the UN. Mr. Herter said the situation is somewhat different from what it was when these offices were active, since the independent agencies of the UN had now grown so tremendously. Mr. Nehru pointed out that the independent agencies have no power to assist in the Congo.

The President said that what we need is a consortium of nations within Africa which could reduce the danger of an arms race in that continent. This consortium could operate under the UN, which would guarantee their national security. Such an arrangement would keep the big powers from competing for the favors of each individual country. The President stressed that the big powers must be kept out of Africa. Mr. Herter mentioned that an Indian, Mr. Dayal,⁸ has taken Bunche’s place as the UN authority on the spot in the Congo. He said Mr. Dayal has been highly effective in this position.

In response to Mr. Nehru’s question, the President described his proposed consortium as a body resembling the Organization of American States. The OAS serves to minimize difficulties among its members and is helping in limiting demands for arms throughout Latin America. The demand for arms has lessened greatly within the last eight years, which is, of course, a favorable development. The purpose would be to ease the arms burden and to ease tensions among States. Nigeria would appear to be a possible leader in establishing such a consortium, since that country shows signs of maturity and is the largest of the black African States. The President mentioned the benefits which have accrued to Europe through the Coal and Steel Community, EURATOM, and the Common Market. With a background of disunity, such as the European nations have sustained for centuries, this fact should give us hope. Mr. Nehru agreed the responsibility must be placed on the Africans themselves. The Africans, with their experiences with colonialism, fear the outside powers. The only difficulty is that the Africans may not agree among themselves as to what to do.

The President mentioned the competition among African Chiefs of State for positions of leadership. He mentioned the ambitions of Toure,⁹ Nkrumah and Tubman.¹⁰ Mr. Herter said Tubman is now visiting in Zurich, in poor health. The President commented on Tubman’s tremendous consumption of cigars and whiskey.

The President then said that Khrushchev’s attack on the UN has brought about a situation more uncertain than at any other time during the eight years he has been in office. It is a very bad development. He mentioned the capability of the Reds to harass Berlin without violating the letter of the Potsdam Agreements. Mr. Herter said that military obligations are being maintained but that the rights of civilians are being infringed upon, at least those unwritten rights which the Soviets have accepted for these years, despite the fact that they were not spelled out in the 1949 Treaty.¹¹ At least Khrushchev said recently there would be no separate peace treaty between East Germany and the Soviets until a further summit meeting some months away.

In response to Mr. Herter’s question, Mr. Nehru expressed the view that the ChiComs are exercising very little influence over Khrushchev. The speech which Khrushchev made in Bucharest was extremely harsh on the ChiComs. At this moment the USSR and the Red Chinese are holding private and secret meetings in Moscow but are not getting along. Khrushchev, by nature, is an extrovert. What he feels comes out. He is an able man and no fool but what he thinks come right out in the open. The President said he should think that Khrushchev would be concerned that the ChiComs not become too powerful; in particular, he should be loathe to allow the ChiComs to develop a missile capability. Mr. Nehru agreed that they would feel this way in the long run, but said there is no immediate danger of the ChiComs becoming too powerful. He mentioned Khrushchev’s fears of the vast population of the ChiComs.

To a question by the President, Mr. Nehru said that no progress is being made on the border disputes with the ChiComs. Negotiations have broken down temporarily since both sides are disagreeing so strongly as to the basic facts. India has sent officials to Peking and Peking has sent officials to Delhi in an effort to ascertain the true facts. Conversations are continuing, and just before Mr. Nehru left, both sets of officials had asked for more time. The difficulty is that the ChiComs will not say exactly where they think the border should run. It is difficult country and the physical marking is difficult, but the Indians themselves have delineated their version of the border. India is willing to discuss minor deviation from that border, but will not tolerate ChiCom claims of an additional 10,000 square miles. To a question by the President, Mr. Nehru affirmed that the Red Chinese claims would place Red China on the edge of the plains of India in the northeast section. Here the ChiComs’ claims are enormous. India border garrisions actually are located deep into the mountains overlooking Tibet. As the result, the ChiComs are better able to support their garrisions logistically than are the Indians. The other area in dispute is located in east Kashmir. This is arid, fascinating, and frightening country, where the ChiComs have claimed and occupied an uninhabited region. The ChiComs are still a long ways from the Indian plains on that particular side.

Regarding the President’s question on roads, Mr. Nehru says that the ChiComs have a good road net along the Tibetan border. The Indians have many roads on their side of the mountainous area also. In the mountains themselves, constructing roads is a difficult task.

The President remarked on the uncompromising nature of all Communists in any negotiating process. The only instance which he recalls in which the Communists gave ground in negotiating was in that of Austrian independence. Here Mr. Herter said that the Communists had negotiated a separate side deal with the Austrians even in this case. In response to a question, Mr. Herter said that oil deliveries from Austria to the USSR are currently being much reduced, and Mr. Nehru agreed. The President said that this shipping of oil to Russia is in itself a violation of our agreements with the Soviets, since the Soviets, in effect, refused to treat Austria as a liberated country.

The President asked Mr. Nehru about his prospective schedule. Mr. Nehru replied that it is indefinite. The President said his own initial plans had called for an address to the UN much later, perhaps in December. When he learned of Khrushchev’s plans, he himself had decided to present his overall program early in the session. In his address he had proposed very little new, but had attempted to place the UN objectives in perspective. The only alternative to speaking early would have been to await Mr. Khrushchev’s attack and then offer a weak reply. He thinks on the whole his decision was a wise one.

The President mentioned that he himself had written that part of the speech which stressed the importance of the UN. He would expect the small nations to watch very closely any attempt to scuttle the UN, since without that body we will live in chaos. Mr. Herter said that the Soviets’ disarmament proposal is the same as their position in Geneva except for the inclusion of some neutrals in the negotiating group.

The President said the fundamental problem facing us all is the fact of the closed society in the USSR. This fact frightens the world and concerns the U.S. If the Soviets possessed an open society, they would have no objection to the concept of mutual inspection.

Mr. Nehru said he hoped that discussions in the UN would become more constructive than they have been thus far. The President said he has always thought that if we could manage to make one solid reciprocal and forceful agreement which would be of a sufficiently limited nature to be realistic, this would be a great step forward. Negotiations on nuclear testing he had thought were going well at first. A scientific group had reached some agreement on the matter of threshhold. The politicians, however, would not accept the agreement of the scientific group. Now we are acting to work out on a joint basis a scientific program to ascertain truly realistic means of detection. In this also we are expecting great difficulty. Negotiations are starting again in Geneva next week.

Regarding Khrushchev’s schedule, the President says nobody knows how long Khrushchev will stay in New York. Probably he will remain as long as he can make trouble.

Turning back to disarmament, the President repeated that in his speech he had said we could go along with any reciprocal verifiable disarmament proposal although some people had asked why we deal with Russia without including Red China. Mr. Nehru said that no disarmament proposal would be satisfactory which excluded Red China.

The President then took issue with those who placed their whole faith in the mutual deterrence of vast nuclear power. At the very least, this concept will impoverish those nations who could otherwise be aided by the resources devoted by the big powers to armaments. There is no question but what the Russian people would welcome disarmament. Only the dictatorship itself cannot tolerate it. Mr. Nehru said he thought even the Soviet government does not want war.

Recognizing the President’s comment on the inadmissibility of inspections to a secret society, Mr. Nehru said the Russians have already agreed to the concept of inspection in principle. The point at issue now is the number of inspections which might be conducted. Mr. Herter said that the Soviets refuse to admit the relationship of inspection frequency to limitations of our instruments, [armaments?] Mr. Nehru said again that the principle of inspection has been “broken through.” The President said that, while Khrushchev may have agreed in principle, the matter of frequency of inspections is a serious one indeed. Macmillan’s first proposal had been to allow some 150 inspections per year. Compared to this, Mr. Khrushchev’s proposal for three per year is somewhat ridiculous. Mr. Herter carried the matter further and said that records show there are 100 seismic events every year which could be mistaken for underground atomic shots. We would like to relate the number of inspections somehow or other to the number of events. For example, we could agree that inspections could be conducted for one out of five of these seismic events. The Soviets, however, refuse to relate the number of inspections to the number of seismic events. He added the Soviets have never replied to our proposals on the cessation of nuclear production.

The President then pointed out our offer made recently in the UN by Ambassador Lodge to turn 30,000 KG of fissionable material over to the UN, contingent only on the similar turnover on the part of the Soviets.¹² The UN could use this material for any purpose. One of the purposes, of course, would be to reduce the military stockpiles held by both the U.S. and the Soviets. The President said he would like to give the balance of military power to the UN but realizes that this idea as a practical matter would not work. Therefore, having made these proposals, he is uncertain where to go from here. He added that if Mr. Nehru and his government find it possible to make constructive proposals, then our people will be glad to discuss them at their convenience. The President said we would run into real trouble when we bring up reciprocity of any kind.

Mr. Nehru said there are two elements to any disarmament proposal; one is the actual disarming itself and the other is the matter of control. Obviously the two are part of one and the same and must be taken together. There should be no argument between one versus the other. The President agreed enthusiastically. He said we are willing to disarm, but first must find a way to check on the activities of this disarmament. The Soviets prefer disarmament first and negotiations on how to check later. This approach we think is tricky. Mr. Nehru repeated that disarmament and controls are tied up in one package.

Mr. Nehru said we need a better atmosphere in this session of the UN General Assembly. The continuation of recriminations will delay progress and make work more difficult. The President mentioned that Khrushchev had hinted of another summit meeting when the President himself is out of office. In this respect the President feels that Khrushchev misgauges American public opinion. No American President could now go to a summit meeting with Khrushchev without assurances ahead of time that Khrushchev would talk constructively. Khrushchev injured his own cause severely by allowing the Heads of Government to convene in Paris before he let go his blast. Had he simply sent a message from Moscow to the effect that he would not come to Paris, his position would have been stronger. Mr. Nehru said wistfully that the situation is exceedingly complicated.

At this point the President presented his album of photographs taken on his December trip to India and all proceeded to pose for the photographers.

John S. D. Eisenhower

1. Source: Eisenhower Library, Whitman File, DDE Diaries. Secret. Drafted by John S.D. Eisenhower. The source text indicates that the conversation took place at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Nehru was in New York for the 15th Session of the U.N. General Assembly, which opened on September 19. Eisenhower was briefed for this meeting with Nehru in a memorandum of September 25 from Acting Secretary Dillon. (Ibid.) A slightly different memorandum of this conversation, drafted by G. Lewis Jones, is in Department of State, Secretary’s Memoranda of Conversation: Lot 64 D 199. Additional briefing material is ibid., Central File 033.9111.
2. Reference is to Khrushchev’s speech before the U.N. General Assembly on September 22. Dag Hammarskjöld was Secretary-General of the United Nations.
3. Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of the Congo.
4. Joseph Kasavubu, President of the Congo.
5. Kwame Nkrumah, President of Ghana.
6. India and Pakistan concluded an agreement on September 19 regarding division of the waters of the Indus Rivers; see Document 97.
7. For text of Eisenhower’s speech before the U.N. General Assembly, see Department of State Bulletin, October 10, 1960, p. 551.
8. Rajeshwar Dayal was recently named Special Representative of the U.N. Secretary-General in the Congo; Ralph Bunche had previously served in that position.
9. Sekou Toure, Prime Minister of Guinea.
10. William V.S. Tubman, President of Liberia.
11. Reference is to the final communiqué of the Paris meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers, June 20, 1949.
12. Reference is to statements made by Lodge in the U.N. Disarmament Commission on August 16, 17, and 18; for text of these statements, see Department of State Bulletin, September 5, 1960, pp. 376–382.