26. Memorandum From Robert W. Komer of the National Security Council Staff to President Johnson1
Title III programs for the UAR and Algeria. These can be separated from India and Pakistan, and reduce the risk of voluntary agency and other plaints that we’re holding up “humanitarian” programs for political reasons.
The best case for going ahead is Algeria. Here CARE (doing 65%), Catholic Relief Services, and Church World Service cooperating with Lutheran World Relief have been operating since 1962. Their proposed FY’66 program is $14 million to reach 2.5 million recipients—mostly through family feeding centers geared to people displaced by the rebellion and unable to provide for themselves. This amounts to 328 million pounds of powdered milk, wheat, flour, corn meal, and vegetable oil.
Supplies are almost exhausted, and we’d have to divert a ship to Algiers in the next few days to keep programs going. CARE lacks the customary 2–3 months stock to work from, because we purposely put Algeria on a hand-to-mouth basis last winter when we thought Ben Bella might well not ask us to continue. But now the new Boumedienne government has formally asked us to continue Title III and for an overall review of our aid program.
The case for going ahead is that Boumedienne seems at least marginally better than Ben Bella, so it would be better not to lump him with our more irksome clients until he proves himself one. Moreover, we don’t want to get him sore at us just before the potentially quite important Afro-Asian summit conference on 5 November in Algiers. One report says that he’ll try to keep the conference from becoming an anti-US platform, if he thinks there’s a chance of improving relations with us. We can’t turn off all the invective, but it may make a difference to have the guy in charge interested in keeping the lid on.2
[Here follows discussion of the United Arab Republic.]