Telegram from Soviet delegate to the UN Zorin to USSR Foreign Ministry on meeting with Cuban delegate to the UN Garcia-Inchaustegui

28 October 1962

1. The UN delegate from Cuba, Garcia-Inchaustegui, has conveyed the following information about his meeting with U Thant on 27 October.

U Thant expressed gratitude for the invitation to visit Cuba that had been extended to him; he valued it as a highly important step, and on 28 October promised to give a definitive answer.

My visit to Cuba, the presence of UN representatives there, declared U Thant, would help avert American aggression against Cuba, since the USA could not carry out an attack while he was there.

U Thant said that in the event that he decides to go, he would intend to take several aides and experts along with him.

U Thant also asked whether the government of Cuba (in the event of his group's journey to Havana) could, on its own initiative, and not because they were official observers, invite U Thant to see first hand whether the construction of missile launch pads and the assembly of bombers had been suspended.

Before this, U Thant had told Garcia-Inchaustegui that Stevenson today had put a request before U Thant to organize the visit so that UN representatives could conduct an on-site inspection on the cessation of the construction projects mentioned above.

In doing so, said U Thant, Stevenson emphasized in various ways that if these projects had not been stopped, then the USA would take new actions. In response to Garcia-Inchaustegui's question as to what this would mean concretely, Stevenson referred, said U Thant, to the strengthening of the blockade and to a USA demand for the convocation of the Security Council.

According to U Thant, Stevenson also said that Kennedy is examining with great earnestness and urgency the idea put forward by Dorticos in his 8 October speech before the General Assembly as the basis for a settlement.

U Thant then put before the Cubans the matter of the establishing of some procedure that would help ascertain that vessels arriving in Cuba in the next 2 to 3 weeks are not supplying arms.

With regard to the issue of Comrade N.S. Khrushchev's message of 27 October, U Thant declared that the formulation contained in it appears to him a positive one.

2. Garcia-Inchaustegui informed us that at 20:30 Eastern Standard Time he heard a Cuban radio broadcast from Havana about the downing by Cuban coastal batteries of an American plane that had invaded Cuban air space.

28.X.62 V. ZORIN

[Source: Archive of Foreign Policy, Russian Federation (AVP RF), Moscow; copy obtained by NHK (Japanese Television), provided to CWIHP, and on file at National Security Archive, Washington, D.C.; translation by John Henriksen, Harvard University.]