Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume E–7, Documents on South Asia, 1969–1972

100. Transcript of Telephone Conversation Between the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) and the President’s Assistant (Haldeman)¹ ²

Washington, November 20, 1970

K: I called for two reasons.

[Omitted here is conversation unrelated to South Asia.]

K: I have two problems about the Pakistanis. I called the Pakistan Ambassador. He is satisfied. I asked about sending a delegation. They are probably not eager to have a delegation.

H: We don’t care. Its to avoid the negative. We have to look humanitarian.

K: We can’t hurt relations with them. You can’t send a delegation into a country that doesn’t want it.

H: I just blasted people working on this because they only have a re-type of the Peru plan. Maybe we should drop food but we have to think of something.

K: Second, we will have the WH involved with a loser. Hundreds of thousands will starve there.

H: But we should do something.

K: We have a man who can step into the Zeigler briefing this afternoon.

H: I won’t do it because we have done nothing.

K: 10,000 blankets, ____ tents, ____ lbs. of wheat. Just waiting to know where to send it.

H: What about concentrated food stuffs.

K: I haven’t the detailed program.

H: What good can they do with wheat. We are treating it as a bureaucratic thing.

K: That’s not true. We have sent three cables a day.

H: Does any one in Iowa care about 3 cables a day to the Pakistanis? They watch thousands of people dying and we should be doing something.

K: And we are doing what can be done at this moment. If there’s a new idea of course we will implement it.

H: We need something that has dramatic fact.

[The conversation concluded with a discussion unrelated to South Asia.]

1. Source: Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Kissinger Papers, Box 365, Telephone Conversations, Chronological File. No classification marking. A notation on the transcript indicates that the conversation took place in the early afternoon. The omissions are in the original transcription. A transcript of Kissinger’s conversation with Ambassador Hilaly earlier in the day is ibid.
2. Haldeman argued for immediate U.S. assistance to the victims in East Pakistan. He was not concerned about the political sensitivities of Pakistani President Yahya’s government: “We have to look humanitarian.”