545. Telegram From the Department of State to Secretary of State Rusk in Manila1
70145. Tosec 4. 1. Following message from Prime Minister Wilson to the President was received this morning via private channel:
“Many thanks indeed for your very helpful message on Rhodesia.2 We are truly grateful for your promise of support if Smith throws away his last chance.
We of course share to some extent the apprehensions of your people, both in Washington and in New York, about the likely difficulties of trying to limit the scope of export sanctions or restricting any oil embargo to Mozambique. But such indications as we have had from Commonwealth Heads of Government are that they will do their best to honour their part of the conference bargain. We shall just have to work hard to achieve the desired result: and this is why your promise of support is of such real practical value to us.
I fully accept what you say about the difficulty of your helping through direct contact with Smith. But I warmly welcome your offer to have a go at Vorster. I believe this could be very helpful, especially if it can be done soon. Without being too sanguine about the likelihood of the South Africans pressing Smith really hard to accept this last chance, I think there is at least a worthwhile prospect of their doing so. George Brown [Page 921] worked on the South African Ambassador here as a preliminary to meeting Muller in New York: and, at that meeting, Muller undertook to think over very carefully what George had said and, for the first time in our dealings with him, he appeared seriously to contemplate the possibility of using South African influence. Accordingly, when he got back here, George sent a further message to Muller, confirming what he had told him of the terms we have now put to Smith and warning him that, as Smith was on the brink of a decision, any South African action would have to be immediate to affect it. We do not, of course, know whether the South Africans have yet taken any action but I shall be very grateful if you will, as you suggest, now instruct your Ambassador in Pretoria to act on the lines you propose.3 This will most usefully reinforce our own approach to Muller. Moreover, the timing should be just right. Smith yesterday gave our emissary in Salisbury his oral reply. As we expected, it temporises. Smith promises us a written reply within the next week or so. His oral reaction has been essentially negative: But I still think there may be an outside chance of getting somewhere with him before our end-November deadline: and, perhaps more important, before the November 11th Anniversary of I.D.I. If the South Africans can be induced to weigh in constructively while he and his colleagues are still deliberating, this might yet tip the scales.
Meanwhile, however, we clearly have to prepare for the worst: and I am sure it is right, as you suggest, that our people should get together to consider the contingencies.
I am not quite sure at what point this will reach you in your present travels. But it brings you my warmest wishes for a profitable outcome. George has given me a heart-warming account of his reception in Washington and especially from yourself. Clearly there can be no room for excessive optimism about current trends in Soviet attitudes. But it seems as though there may be at least a chink of light at the end of the tunnel.”
2. White House relaying Canberra.4
- Source: Department of State, Central Files, POL 16 RHOD. Secret; Nodis. Drafted and approved by John P. Walsh of S/S. Repeated to London for the Ambassador. Secretary Rusk was in the Philippines October 21–27 for the Manila summit conference on Vietnam, October 24–25.↩
- See Document 544.↩
- Telegram 71381 to Pretoria, October 21, instructed Ambassador Rountree to make U.S. views known orally to Prime Minister Vorster and to leave an aide-memoire expressing firm U.S. support for British policy on Rhodesia. (Department of State, Central Files, POL 16 RHOD) In telegram 529 from Capetown, October 24, Rountree reported that he met with Vorster for 75 minutes that day and gave him the aide-memoire. (Ibid.)↩
- President Johnson was in Australia October 20–23 for a State visit preceding the Manila conference.↩