Library of Congress - Kissinger Papers 1970-11-20

Transcript of Telephone Conversation Between the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) and the President’s Assistant (Haldeman), Washington, November 20, 1970

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Foreign Relations of the United States
Volume E7
Documents on South Asia, 1969-1972

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.

Washington, November 20, 1970

TELCON

Haldeman/Kissinger early afternoon 11/20/70

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 concludes with a discussion unrelated to South Asia.]