Library of Congress - Kissinger Papers

1971-07-27

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Transcript of Telephone Conversation Between President Nixon and His Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger)

Page: 0

Foreign Relations of the United States
Volume X1
South Asia Crisis, 1971

Source: Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Kissinger Papers, Box 368, Telephone Conversations, Chronological File. No classification marking. The call was placed by the President to Kissinger in the White House.

Washington, July 27, 1971, 7:20 p.m.
P: Working late?
K: Yes, I am going over some papers.
P: Anything new?
K: Nothing of any consequence.
P: A lot of stuff to catch up on I guess.
K: There’s a certain routine.
P: Terrific, I know.
K: It keeps piling up. There’s still a lot of congratulatory mail(2) coming in.
P: Good, good. You know the one thing we want to do is to be fair—we will probably be getting a question on the India/Pakistan thing. We really want to—we sure don’t want to hurt our friends.
K: No, we certainly don’t. Being fed by the—.
P: I know, the Indians. Awful but they are getting some assistance from Keating, of course.
K: A lot of assistance; he is practically their mouthpiece.
P: I talked to Bill [Rogers] in California while I was waiting for you. He is down on Keating; he is a total mouthpiece for the Indians.
K: He has gone native. As I told you, I saw the Indians and listened to their complaints and Keating kept interrupting and saying but you forgot to mention this or that.
P: I think we ought to get moving on him; he is 71 years old.
K: Yes, but he would do us a lot of damage now. We should wait until things quiet down.
P: Two or 3 months and then I think we ought to do it.
K: I will make it clear with the Indians that there isn’t going to be a war.
P: They had had this plan—covers planned [sic] long before this.
K: They have certainly been more respectful since this trip. I have asked Sisco to prepare a scenario of how we could handle this situation. I will talk to Farland tomorrow; and within this next week we will have a proposal for you. The problem—no military aid to Pakistan, they are not even getting economic aid. If anything will tempt the Indians to attack, it will be the complete helplessness of Pakistan.
P: After all they have done, we just aren’t going to let that happen.
K: Right, right.
[Omitted here is discussion unrelated to South Asia.]




Footnotes:


2 The mail was in response to Kissinger’s trip to China.