Kissinger: Right. But as Prime Minister he would be the most conciliatory.
President: I have never met Peres.
Wilson: He is sinister and slippery, always the man in a hurry.
Kissinger: That's right. He is quite ruthless. Dayan would be the best because he understands it. Rabin actually understands but he is vain and he wants to preempt the hawks. He dances around and winds up where he doesn't want to be.
Wilson: Last summer Rabin sounded quite reasonable on the West Bank. Now Hussein is trying to become the spokesman for all the Palestinians. He is mending his fences after Rabat.
President: The Israelis should have moved before Rabat.
How about Portugal? We are disturbed. Yesterday I was told that there is no communist influence in the armed forces movement. This is nonsense of course. I also got a long Constitutional lecture.
Kissinger: It was an extraordinary and novel theory, which is that the armed forces movement is the only democratic force and represents all the people. The parties on the other hand are by definition not democratic because they represent only a part of the people.
Callaghan: We haven't seen eye to eye with you. The AFM is a microcosm of all kinds of opinion and we don't regard them as beyond redemption, although we too think that things are going badly, as you do. But we don't want to give up yet. We are still trying to elevate the parties and don't want to wirte them off yet. Perhaps you should send some generals to talk to the AFM man-to-man.
Kissinger: Our military?!
Wilson: This Goncalves -- I don't like his skittish evasiveness. He reminds me of Clive Jenkins at our Labor Party conference. They are not really generals; they came up not liking generals.
Callaghan: Goncalves promoted himself to full general yesterday. We will have to go for gut reactions, not objective standards. We should press them to reopen the newspaper, to hold elections next year and to maintain a free press.
SECRET/SENSITIVE
