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November 13, 1991

The Chancellor's [Helmut Kohl's] Meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzales on Wednesday, 13 November 1991

Kohl and Gonzalez discuss the implications of the Yuguslavia War on the cohesion of the European Community. Both have a shared concern that the EC could be torn apart. Eventually, they discuss preparations for the Europoean Council in Maastricht in December 1991.

September 20, 1991

The Chancellor's [Helmut Kohl's] Meeting with Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzales, Thursday, 19 September 1991, 11:20 until 12:46 hours

Kohl and Gonzalez discuss the potential for European integration after Germany's unification and the urge for fast action after the coup in Moscow. They review the ensuing war in Yugoslavia and the need for the Federal Republic to avoid going it alone in its efforts for the recognition of Slovenia and Croatia.

May 1, 1991

The Chancellor's [Helmut Kohl's] Meeting with Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez on May 1, 1991 in Lanzarote

Kohl and Gonzalez discuss the state of European integration and the situation in the Gulf. They review the preparations for the forthcoming European Council in Luxemburg arguing in favor of a step-by-step approach as the best way to achieve lasting results.

February 7, 1963

Department of State Telegram 1490 to the American Embassy Rome

In this overview of the state of the Jupiter/Polaris negotiations and the next steps, the State Department instructs Ambassador Hare to lead the negotiations with Turkey and to inform U.S missions that McNamara’s letter to Andreotti on the Polaris and Sergeant deployments was in the works; that Turkish “conditions” were not clear; that the U.S. and the two countries had to formally notify NATO of the “modernization” program; that bilateral agreements with Ankara and Rome on the Jupiter/Polaris arrangement would need to be negotiated; that steps had to be taken to prepare Polaris submarines for missions in the Mediterranean by April 1; and that the U.S. needed “considerable lead time” to prepare for the removal of the Jupiters. The negotiation of Turkey’s conditions for the Jupiter removal should not hold up notifying NATO or cause delay of the U.S.-Italy arrangements. On the use of the naval base at Rota, Spain, for stationing Polaris submarines, several NATO governments had objected (because of the Franco dictatorship), and so far Madrid had rejected U.S. proposals.

May 31, 1968

Compilation of Comments on the Treaty of Tlatelolco Formulated during the General Debate of the First Committee on the Topic of the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (Excluding Those of the Representative of Mexico...)

This memorandum is a compendium of comments about the Treaty of Tlatelolco made by different delegations at the UN. It includes statements by the delegates from the United States, Brazil, Ireland, Ethiopia, Austria, Italy, Pakistan, El Salvador, Mauritania, Iraq, Greece, Spain, Tanzania, Zambia, the Netherlands, Argentina, Venezuela, Sierra Leone, Canada, Jordan, Ecuador, Guyana, Colombia, Malta, Panama, Bolivia, Costa Rica, and Peru, in that order.

November 7, 1975

Report of the United Nations Visiting Mission to Spanish Sahara, 1975

Spain first entered the Western Sahara in 1884, but it took its troops five decades to firmly establish control over an area whose borders were drawn by agreements with France between 1886 and 1912. In the 1940s, engineers discovered that the area held important mineral deposits. Early hopes for oil did not quite materialize. Like its northern Moroccan neighbor, however, the West Sahara turned out to be one of the world’s largest sources of phosphate, a key ingredient for fertilizers. Financed by US and French capital, extraction began in the 1950s—the start of a story told in Lino Camprubi’s “Resource Geopolitics: Cold War Technologies, Global Fertilizer, and the Fate of the West Sahara” (2015).

Unlike Morocco, though, the West Sahara did not become independent in the 1950s. At the time, Sahrawis did not quite have a nationalist conscience. They were principally camel-herding nomads organized into fiercely autonomous tribes. It was as such, too, that some fought on Morocco’s side in short clashes with France and Spain in 1956. They were suppressed in 1958 by the Franco-Spanish operation Ouragan. In the selfsame decade, the 1950s, the phosphate mines and the infrastructure around them started affecting the Sahrawis—first socioeconomically. Urbanization began in serious, an industrial labor force grew, and scholarization increased. By the later 1960s, these changes had political knock-on effects, as Tony Hodges has shown in his classic Western Sahara: The Roots of a Desert War (1983). Certain Sahrawis who had progressed to a university degree, some in Morocco, became politically active at home, together with some workers. Sahrawis began to develop a distinct national conscience. While somewhat open to ideas about associating with Mauritania, to the West Sahara’s south, they now sharply turned against Spain. Thus, although Madrid was able to organize some loyalists, in 1973 the Frente Popular para la Liberación de Saguia el-Hamra y Río de Oro (Polisario) was founded, a liberation organization that immediately started a guerilla war backed by Algeria. Sahrawis’ crystallizing national conscience also faced Morocco, which claimed their homeland, arguing it had historically ruled that area. In October 1975, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague rejected this claim as irrelevant, asserting the primacy of self-determination.

This verdict mirrored the UN General Assembly’s (UNGA) stance. From 1966, the UNGA had passed several resolutions asserting that the Spanish colony’s fate had to be settled by a popular referendum. This followed established procedure. Thus, in 1960 UN resolution 1514—which the ICJ would cite in 1975—stated that a decolonized area could be attached to another postcolonial state only after its people had been consulted by referendum. Though delaying the referendum, Spain accepted it in principle, and in May 1975 agreed to a UN mission of inquiry.

This mission, whose report constitutes the text here, turned out to be pivotal. It did not simply document Sahrawis’ demand. Rather, its very presence on the ground affected the political reality: it allowed Sahrawis in town after town to publicly and vociferously assert what they in their overwhelming majority wanted: independence. In November, however, the Spanish government made an about-face, weakened by the protracted moribund state of its head, General Francisco Franco (1892-1975; r. from 1939), and impressed by the force of Moroccan King Hassan II’s (1929-1999; r. from 1961) populist mobilization over the West Sahara, to which the UN reacted hesitantly. In return for a 35% share in the biggest West Saharan phosphate mine, Fosbucraa, Spain transferred power to Morocco and Mauritania. The two states divided the West Sahara, and Polisario continued its war. In 1979 Mauritania sued for peace and withdrew from its territory—of which Morocco rather than the Polisario was able to take control, however.

October 19, 1962

Letter, Howland H. Sargeant to Stan [Ward]

AMCOMLIB President Sargeant  provides the CIA liaison officer with an explanation of his memorandum on the Spanish Government’s request to share use of the RL transmitters.

July 11, 1962

Memorandum by Stan Ward, 'Policy Guidance for RL Broadcasts from Spanish Base'

A CIA IOD official recommends that an attached draft guidance [page 3 is missing] on RL’s transmitters in Spain be substituted for an RL Policy Position Statement of June 14, 1962. 

October 8, 1962

Howland H. Sargeant, 'Assessment of the Position of the American Committee for Liberation in Spain as of Mid-September 1962'

AMCOMLIB President Sargeant reviews changes in the Spanish government and its efforts to monitor Radio Liberty  broadcasts and share use of RL transmitters.

December 18, 1961

Memorandum, Catharine Depuy to Howland H. Sargeant, 'Programs Broadcast from Madrid in Languages of Eastern Europe and the USSR'

AMCOMLIB policy official Dupuy conveys to President Sargeant her concern about the content of Radio Madrid broadcasts to the USSR and Eastern Europe.

Pagination