500. Telegram From the Department of State to the Embassy in the United Kingdom1
3031. White House has received following message to President from Prime Minister:
“I was very glad to have a talk with Bob McNamara and George Ball last week about the various problems that confront us.2 I am much looking forward to discussing all these matters with you when we meet on December 17.
George Ball told me that you have now asked Gilpatric to return to your service to take charge of the whole of the Rhodesia operation. This is just to say that we should be very glad to see him just as soon as he has got his eye in.
On that subject, as you may know, Malcolm MacDonald has just spent a few days in Zambia with Kenneth Kaunda and has brought back with him a whole series of requests. Kenneth Kaunda, understandably, is in a very apprehensive and jumpy mood: He desperately wants to be sensible and statesmanlike but he is under great pressure from his own extremists who want him to take energetic but suicidal action against the Smith regime and from the Organization of African Unity who are pressing him to allow Zambia to be used as a base for African inspired operations against Rhodesia.
In these circumstances, he has asked me to provide a British military presence in Zambia. He has two requests: First, a detachment of British troops to take over and guard the Kariba installations on the Rhodesian side of the frontier and secondly an RAF presence in Zambia to deter the Rhodesia Air Force and to pre-empt the O.A.U. He also has made a great number of economic requests.
We considered these requests this morning. We decided to decline to mount the Kariba operation, not least because Smith may well have mined the installations and an operation by us might well accelerate what we want to avoid. We decided to meet the second request by sending a squadron of Javelins to Ndola. The operation, which has been planned on a contingency basis for some time, will start today and should be completed by Tuesday or Wednesday of this week. The Javelins will go into Ndola, the radar environment to Lusaka and men of the [Page 850] RAF regiment will go to both airfields and possibly to Livingstone as well to guard against sabotage etc. We shall thus be in occupation of all the main airfields in Zambia. We have made it a condition of acceding to this request that Zambia will invite no other foreign forces into the country without our agreement. At the same time H.M.S. Eagle, which sailed from Singapore some ten days ago, is off Dar-es-Salaam able to cover this operation, and provide a second strike in the highly unlikely case of its being necessary.
Let me make it quite plain that the purpose of this operation is entirely defensive. Its main purpose is to reassure Kaunda and pre-empt a hostile (e.g. Ghanaian or U.A.R.) African presence which might well develop communist overtones. It should also indicate to the Smith regime that we are in earnest and it should enable Kaunda to resist further pressures from the more extremist of his African friends who incidentally, seem to be the more extreme the further they are away from the scene. Kenyatta and Nyerere are both being very reasonable and moderate in this whole business. I do not expect that Smith will react violently, but we are ready for him if he does. Nor do I think that this will make him react on the copper front: This would be a two-edged weapon for him, and one of the rebel ministers on television only last night emphasized Rhodesia’s interest in normal relations with Zambia.
But we are well aware that a defensive military presence in Zambia, valuable though it will be, will not of itself quell this rebellion. The economic measures which we and our friends have so far taken may well do the trick, but they will take time and will not start to bite until after Christmas. We have therefore decided to go for the quick economic kill. The Chancellor of the Exchequer will be turning the financial screw more tightly: We shall add all agricultural commodities, minerals and metals to tobacco and sugar on the list of prohibited imports and hope that all other importing countries will do the same. Sir N. Kipping, former Director-General of the F.B.I., has been out to Zambia, and has a plan for replacing Zambia’a imports from Rhodesia from other sources. We shall also want to talk to the principal suppliers about cutting out exports to Rhodesia of economically important commodities.
There remains the question of oil sanctions. Here action by Britain alone, even if it were thought desirable, would not be effective without international backing. This is a subject which we want to discuss with your people in the first instance, and discuss very quickly, so I hope you will agree to send Gilpatric to talk to George Brown, who is in charge of the whole economic side of our operations, as soon as possible. Meanwhile we shall take advantage of the presence here of Tom Mann to talk all these measures over with him as well as the contingency plans to keep Zambia going if relations between her and Rhodesia deteriorate.
[Page 851]Overriding everything is my awareness which I know that Kenneth Kaunda shares, that unless we in Britain deal promptly with this rebellion and if possible without force, there is a danger of a racial war in Africa with all that that means for the free world. It is therefore encouraging that not only Kaunda, but Kenyatta, Nyerere and Obote as well, should be taking the view that it is only the presence of British forces in Central Africa which can avert this catastrophe.
You will, of course, realize the relevance of all this to our East of Suez role, on which McNamara will no doubt report to you.”
- Source: Department of State, Central Files, POL 16 RHOD. Secret; Priority. Drafted by Herbert B. Thompson of S/S, cleared by Bromley Smith, and approved by Read.↩
- Telegram 2443 from London, November 27, transmitted a memorandum of conversation of the Prime Minister’s talk with Secretary McNamara and Under Secretary Ball in London on November 26. (Ibid., POL UK-US)↩