Office of the Historian

580. Memorandum From William H. Brubeck of the National Security Council Staff to the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy)1

Washington, March 18, 1964.

RE

  • Your Meeting with Ambassador Naude
1.
On February 12 US and British Ambassadors in Capetown presented parallel aide-memoires urging South African Government postpone implementation of Odendaal report apartheid policy in SWA pending ICJ decision.2 They noted that we have urged other UN members to sit still awaiting ICJ decision and could not restrain them if South Africa moved.
2.
In aide-memoire reply of March 33 South African Government insisted its SW A administration is “in spirit of the mandate”; that it cannot [Page 975] postpone Odendaal implementation because of ICJ case; that it can separate “overall design” of report from inoffensive “economic welfare benefits”; that “separate development has been fundamental to administration of SWA from the beginning and is not new issue”; denies that implementation of Odendaal would justify cease and desist order.
3.
US and British Ambassadors submitting second aide-memoire this week (attached)4 asserting—that South African implementation would precipitate ICJ action; that if Security Council called upon to support cease and desist order USG would “respect authority of ICJ” and “could not be expected to shield ICJ consequences of its action”. Urges SAG to wait for final ICJ decision.
4.
It might be very useful to draw Naude out on what it would take to move South Africa toward some accommodation.
Bill Brubeck 5
  1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, Africa, Union of South, Vol. I, Memos and Miscellaneous, 11/63–10/64. No classification marking.↩
  2. See Document 577.↩
  3. Telegram 85 to Cape Town, March 5, reported that on March 3 Ambassador Naude had delivered a South African aide-memoire replying to the February 12 U.S.-U.K. demarche. (Department of State, Central Files, POL 19 SW AFR/UN)↩
  4. Not attached. The U.S. aide-memoire originally transmitted in telegram 65 to Cape Town on March 5 was corrected by telegram 73 to Cape Town, March 14. (Ibid.)↩
  5. Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩