Office of the Historian

306. Memorandum of Conversation1

Washington, August 25, 1965.

SUBJECT

  • US-Somali Relations

PARTICIPANTS

  • Ahmed Mohamed Adan, Somali Ambassador
  • G. Mennen Williams, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs
  • Peter C. Walker, OIC, Somali Affairs

Ambassador Ahmed paid his first call on Governor Williams in the course of which he outlined certain basic Somali attitudes toward the problems of US-Somali relations. He said he thought that the fact that Somalia was a successful working democracy, which had resisted the temptation to adopt the dictatorial form of government of certain of its neighbors, was not sufficiently appreciated in the United States. Governor Williams replied that we were aware of the democratic institution in Somalia but that our appreciation of this fact had sometimes been over-shadowed by our feeling that Somalia was coming under the influence of the Russians and by the irredentist policy of the Somali government. Ambassador Ahmed stressed that the desire for unification of all Somalis was an underlying political factor in his country which no Somali government could afford to ignore and long survive. He said that the Somali people considered that the Ogaden was under the colonial rule of Ethiopia just like any other colonial territory. Mr. Walker remarked that President Aden had recently told him that he considered the problem of the [Page 530] Ogaden to be primarily a human problem and that, if the Ethiopian government were to take proper steps to satisfy the political, economic and cultural aspirations of the Somali people in that region, the Somali government could have no quarrel with the situation.

With regard to US policy toward Ethiopia, Ambassador Ahmed said that Somali people felt that the US was helping Ethiopia to maintain its hold on the Ogaden and for this reason there was a popular feeling of hostility toward the US. He referred specifically to a recent article in the Christian Science Monitor which he said stated that the US Army Special Forces were training Ethiopians to put down Somali insurgents in the Ogaden. Governor Williams said that our general position was that until the legal sovereignty of a given piece of territory was changed that it was the right of the central government to administer that territory and to maintain peace and order in it. In this respect, therefore, our policy was probably in conflict with the position of the Somali government.

The question of the current Ethiopia-Somali propaganda war was discussed and Governor Williams expressed the hope that it would be possible for both sides to agree on calling a halt to such tactics.

In parting, Ambassador Ahmed said that he felt it necessary and desirable to speak frankly about some of the problems in US-Somali relations and Governor Williams agreed that a frank exchange of views was always useful.

  1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, POL SOMALI–US. Confidential. Drafted by Walker on August 16.↩