Summary of Premier Zhou’s Conversation with President Nasser

Secret              Document 617

Foreign Ministry File

Summary of Premier Zhou’s Conversation with President Nasser

Regarding the Issue of Bouteflika’s Proposal to Call for a Postponement of the Asian-African Conference

On the afternoon of 23 June 1965, when [Gamel Abdel] Nasser accompanied the Premier [Zhou Enlai] to the train station when he went to Alexandria, in the train he raised for the first time the issue of postponing the Asian-African Conference. Nasser said: Last night [Abdelaziz] Bouteflika said to me that the situation in Algeria at present was unstable, the demonstrations that had taken place in support of [Ahmed] Ben Bella were sporadic, that it now seemed that it was the Algerian communists who were organizing them, as well as over a thousand foreign journalists. Bouteflika said that, under the present circumstances, Algeria’s leaders should do their utmost to deal with domestic issues, but if they held the Asian-African Conference, Algeria’s leaders would then have to spend all their time on the Asian-African Conference. I said to Bouteflika that the conference site and place where the delegations would be staying would be outside the city [Algiers] and perhaps would not be affected by demonstrations or foreign journalists. Bouteflika said in response that only the delegation heads would stay outside the city and that each delegation would stay inside the city. I said to Bouteflika that we believe that postponing the conference would not be to Algeria’s benefit, but that if holding the conference would indeed be difficult and if there were no guarantee of security, the United Arab Republic would cooperate with Algeria to propose postponing the conference.

Nasser also said that he believed that it was not only Algerian communists who had been organizing the demonstrations in Algeria.

General Office, Ministry of Foreign Affairs        

Printing and distribution         13 July 1965