Telegram from the Brazilian Embassy in Havana (Bastian Pinto), 3:15 p.m., Wednesday

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR EXTERNAL RELATIONS

TELEGRAM

RECEIVED

13610

FROM THE EMBASSY IN HAVANA

ON/14/14/XI/62

CONFIDENTIAL—URGENT

DAC/DEA/DNU/DAS/DAM/DOr/600.(24h) Substitution

Question of Cuba.

Conversations with Mikoyan.

385 – WEDNESDAY – 15hs15 – The tight secrecy continues to surround the conversations with [Anastas] Mikoyan. However, from a generally well-informed source, I obtained in this respect the following information: 1o) Fidel Castro, before the arrival of Mikoyan to Havana, held various meetings with Raul [Castro], [Cuban President Osvaldo] Dorticos, [Ernesto] “Che” Guevera and Carlos [Rafael] Rodriguez, in order to fix a monolithic position around the questions that would be discussed with the Russian leader; 2 o) this position was revealed to be extraordinarily rigid in the course of the conversations. The Cubans began to complain that during the first weeks of the crisis they were not consulted nor informed by the Soviet Government. They pointed out, [word illegible], it had been an error [to make?—word illegible] the Russian proposal to trade the Cuban bases [for those—words illegible] in Turkey, since, in the first place, Cuba is a socialist country, that it could not be, however, an object of negotiations with the West. The Cuban leaders stressed that the referred position lessens the prestige of the Cuban revolution on the continent. The result would have been otherwise, better [acrescentaram], if, in place of Turkey, the Soviet Government had thought of Guantanamo. With indelicacy, they complain that the Soviet Government did not previously consult the Cuban Government about the international inspection of this country; 3 o) Mikoyan retorted with identical violence, explaining that the Soviet Union worried itself with saving the peace, but also created conditions that guaranteed the integrity of Cuba. The Soviet Government did not make concessions and also felt, in the end of the first week of the crisis, exactly as the Cuban Government, that the invasion of Cuba was a question of hours. In the second place, Mikoyan made clear that the Soviet Union did not admit that Cuba interferes in its international politics. He criticized strongly the speech of Fidel Castro of 28 of October, in which he rejected the international inspection, affirming that its result was to complicate the crisis, aggravating the danger of war; 4 o) the conversations were extended to plan the general strategy, having Mikoyan invested against the declaration of Havana, which he considers suicidal politics that tend to deprive Cuba of the support of other Latin American countries. The anti-American ideological line advocated in this document is prejudicial to the left on the continent and in this respect various complaints have arrived to Moscow. The USSR is against the declaration of Havana, which was in frank disagreement with the doctrine of peaceful coexistence. The affirmative Cuban response, [words illegible], was that the peaceful coexistence is an adequate policy for the maintenance of world peace, and should permit Cuban support to the anti-imperialist revolutions beginning on the Continent; 5 o) the basic proposal of Mikoyan was that Cuba should accept a formula [words illegible] solution of the immediate crisis and therefore to create conditions for, in the following moment, to obtain the adequate guarantees against a North American aggression; 6 o) the Cubans refuse to accept the international inspection and, in a rigid and even extremist manner, want consciously to make difficult a solution of the crisis with the objective to give a public demonstration of its independence in the face of the USSR obligating it to assume a more concrete responsibility in relation to the created situation. I transmit this information with due reservations, although I believe sufficiently in its veracity. I judge it usable to understand the Cuban position and the antecedents of the joint Cuban-Soviet proposal presented, yesterday, to the Secretary General of the UN.

LUIZ LEIVAS BASTIAN PINTO