84. Memorandum From Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to the President0
We had little chance to stave off Guevara’s Algerian visit; we learned of it only two days before he arrived. We don’t even know whether Guevara invited himself or whether the Algerians asked for higher-ranking delegations from Cuba and the UAR than from other countries.1 The press gave him prominent but not excessive treatment and is playing his current trip around Algeria in moderate to low key. Porter says Algerians paid more attention to UAR Vice President Amer.
Reasons behind Cuba/Algeria tie are baffling, but we think Ben Bella sees it as a sop to extremists who oppose continued close association with France. Recent financial deal with France, while quite successful economically, was not politically spectacular. Ben Bella hasn’t pressed Paris further on Saharan nuclear testing. His economic difficulties may have made him more cautious about nationalization. So he may feel playing up to foreign revolutionaries in Cuba and Angola is one of his few appeals to his own left.
In any case, we have no realistic alternative but to live with Cuba/Algeria affair till it peters out, meanwhile helping this along by educating Algerians on how little they gain and how much it might cost. We’ve been doing so every chance we have, pressing the line both here and in Algiers that things like Guevara visit don’t help Algeria win friends in our Congress and public. Salinger and I both chided new Algerian Ambassador on Guevara visit.
Guellal says Ben Bella recognizes that Cuba has become a Soviet satellite, but that he hopes to move Castro away from Khrushchev. Ben Bella claims this is not incompatible with good US relations; we’ll have to keep working on him that it is. I’m confident that over time Algerians will increasingly realize Cuban tie is worthless, if we can just sit it out till then.
- Source: Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Countries Series, Algeria, 6/63-9/63. Confidential. A marginal handwritten notation reads: “(Taken from Pres. weekend reading dtd 7/19/63—Tab 6)”.↩
- Che Guevara had been the Cuban delegate to the Independence Day celebrations in Algiers. On July 15, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs J. Wayne Fredericks sent a memorandum to Under Secretary Ball noting that members of the U.S. Delegation to that event had expressed concern at the attention paid to Guevara and the lack of attention given to U.S. aid efforts in Algeria. (Department of State, Central Files, POL 17-4 ALG)↩