Office of the Historian

344. Memorandum From Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy)0

Washington, October 19, 1963.

MAC—

We’re moving forward on preventing Yemen crisis, on which I’m spending all necessary time. Some progress is in sight but not enough, I thought, to warrant a weekender for JFK.

We finally got Stevenson to beat up Paul Martin on keeping Canadians in UNYOM (I’ve been threate ning to urge JFK write Pearson if State didn’t get off the dime). Canadians have agreed if Yugoslavs will stay, plus certain other conditions not yet clear. But we told Canadians President had braced Tito, and this greatly impressed them with JFK interest. As you know, Tito said he’d certainly consider it and JFK drove point home by asking Tito to let us know pronto.1

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Meanwhile, we’ve been working hard on UK; London 19192 indicates they’ve caved, will support UNYOM continuance, and will tell Saudis so. We think main reason they caved is because of our thinly veiled threat to withdraw our jets, leaving them to field inevitable Saudi requests to provide air defense.

Istanbul Chiefs of Mission conference has endorsed (Istanbul 82)3 plan of action Grant and I worked out (Deptel 77 to Istanbul).4 We may fail but not for lack of trying.

Next step is to go back hard at Nasser, using JFK message as lever along lines I showed you mid-week. Regrettably this will be along Saturday5 afternoon (State insisted on waiting for Istanbul OK, and Grant couldn’t see Rusk until this morning). We must get some gestures from Nasser in time for us to use them with Faisal (President will also have to go after Faisal but we have already insinuated risk of Hard Surface withdrawal).

RWK
  1. Source: Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Countries Series, Yemen, 10/63. Secret.↩
  2. A memorandum of this portion of Kennedy’s conversation with Yugoslav President Tito on October 17 at the White House is in Department of State, Presidential Correspondence: Lot 66 D 204.↩
  3. Dated October 18. (Ibid., Central Files, POL 27–14 YEMEN/UN)↩
  4. Document 342.↩
  5. Document 340.↩
  6. October 19; see Document 347.↩