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Roots of 1977 Somali-Ethiopian War
Transcript of Meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig, Jr., and Cuban Vice Premier Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, Mexico City, 23 November 1981
Embassy of USSR TOP SECRET to Republic of Cuba Copy No.__ Ser. No. 544 8 December 1981 CC CPSU
Attached please find a stenographic record received by the Soviet Ambassador from C. R. Rodriguez of his conference with U.S. Secretary of State Alexander A. Haig which took place in Mexico City on 23 November of this year.
Attachment: original in Spanish, 38 pages, and translation consisting of 26 pages; this address only.
AMBASSADOR OF THE USSR TO THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA /s/ V. VOROTNIKOV
[attachment]
Translated from Spanish
CONFERENCE OF DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF THE STATE COUNCIL OF THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA CARLOS RAFAEL RODRIGUEZ WITH U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE ALEXANDER HAIG, IN MEXICO, 23 NOVEMBER 1981 "YEAR OF THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF VICTORY AT PLAYA GIRON"
(Stenographic record, State Council)
Carlos R. Rodriguez. [Mexican Foreign Minister] Jorge [Castaneda], why don't you stay with us a while? I'd like to make some introductory remarks. Jorge Castaneda. Okay.
Carlos R. Rodriguez. Just one more minute (spoken in English). Can you sit with us for a little while? Jorge Castaneda. Of course.
Carlos R. Rodriguez. Just a second (spoken in English). It seems to me necessary and fitting that we express the thanks of the Cuban government to the government of Mexico for the kind intentions it has displayed in making the conduct of this meeting possible.
When the government of Mexico communicated this suggestion to us, we immediately expressed our agreement. Indeed, this was a difficult moment, inasmuch as, in the entire period of our revolution, we have never encountered such a torrent of accusations and threats against our country, and besides that we knew that our counterpart would be the Secretary of State, one of the very most active exponents of this trend, Mr. Haig himself. Notwithstanding, we consider that this meeting comports with the principles to which we have adhered since the moment of victory of the Cuban Revolution and its ascendance to power.
We have never refused to engage in dialogue. We have always considered that dialogue must take place in conditions of equality and mutual respect, and, for our part, we approach dialogue in the light of respect for principles which, from our point of view, are not subject to debate. We have had contacts with the American government over the course of these years: contact with the Ford administration, and the Carter administration, on parallel levels. There were moments of rapprochement. And then circumstances arose which cut short that rapprochement. In our message to the government of Mexico, we wanted to say that, from our side, we are in complete accord with the ideas expressed yesterday by President Lopez-Portillo, who called for an end to the verbal terrorism which has been widely utilized by both sides in the recent past, and for a beginning to the process of detente. *
We became involved in Angola without the slightest wish to establish our military presence there. Speaking of military presence, I have in mind the presence of regular troops. In sending the first 150 people to Angola, we had absolutely no conception of what would become of the events in that country. This I can state to you unequivocally.We had long maintained our ties with the MPLA [Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola] in its struggle against Portuguese colonialism.
President [Agostinho] Neto requested our assistance in the preparation of groups which led to organization of the Angolan army.
With this aim we dispatched 150 persons in three schools: one located in the south, the other in the northeast, and the third around Luanda. The subsequent development of events ensued as follows: suddenly we received news from Neto that they had been attacked by forces from Zaire and troops of Holden Roberto from the north, and by South Africa from the south. I can assure you unequivocally, inasmuch as I played a direct role in this matter, that when the decision to dispatch Cuban forces into Angola was made, we communicated nothing about it to the Soviet Union. We were not even aware of its point of view on that account. And we had absolutely no idea of the number of troops that it would be necessary to send. In this manner, the first group was dispatched when the forces in the southern theater advanced more than 400, almost 500 kilometers from the Namibian border, approaching Lobito and Benguela, and the forces of Zaire were located 30 kilometers from Luanda. In this situation we sent at first not regular troops, but rather groups of commandos. It is true that subsequently an agreement was reached between Cuba and the Soviet Union regarding the activity of the forces, inasmuch as the Soviet Union already had an obligation to Angola to supply arms and it became necessary to speed up its implementation. As a result, we reached an agreement, and we don't deny this, under which the Soviet Union proceeded to dispatch certain types of weapons, and we sent people who were capable of using them.
And thus it was. When we became involved in the events in Angola, we had absolutely no concept of the geopolitical conceptions about the importance of Angola in light of the interests of the Soviet Union. We saw in Angola a friendly country, a group of revolutionaries struggling against colonialism, against South Africa, and embarked on all of this. And then Ethiopia stepped to the front of the line. How did all of this happen there? We established relations with Ethiopia at the request of Somalia. We had maintained no diplomatic ties with Ethiopia, and we harbored serious doubts in relation to the process that was taking place in that country. At the time, the leader of the revolution was not Mengistu. Power was in the hands of Teferi Bante. And I was personally assigned to establish contact in Colombo [Sri Lanka], where I headed the Cuban delegation at a conference of the heads of state and governments of the non-aligned countries [in August 1976], to establish contact with Teferi Bante and Ali Bukarom, at that time Vice President of Somalia, for the purpose of attempting to reconcile them among themselves, which turned out to be impossible because of the refusal of Teferi Bante.
Subsequently, Vice President [of Somalia Gen. Mohamed Ali] Samantar, simultaneously occupying the post of Minister of Defense of Somalia, came to Cuba. I was in charge of the preliminary negotiations with him. In their course he addressed himself with a request for military assistance from Cuba for an attack on Ethiopia, claiming that that country represented the greatest danger to socialism in North Africa. At that moment we had no idea that our troops would ever end up in Ethiopia. We had a group in Somalia, which was rendering assistance in the creation of a militia, and the Soviet Union had armed forces in Somalia and was utilizing the Somali port of Berbera as a base for its navy. This is how the close cooperation with Somalia came about. Samantar had a discussion with Fidel and Raul Castro, who counseled in favor of restraint and the conduct of negotiations.
During his visit to Africa [in March 1977], Fidel Castro met first with Siad Barre and then in Ethiopia with Mengistu, and agreed with them to conduct a historic meeting in Aden. That meeting was attended by Mengistu and his assistants, Siad Barre and his assistants, Ali Rubayi, who at that time was the president of [South] Yemen, Fattah Ismail and Ali Nasir, who is now the president of South Yemen, and Cuba was represented by Fidel Castro and myself. Fidel worked - and when I say Fidel, it is because he was at the center of that meeting - from 10:00 p.m. to 7:00 in the morning, trying to achieve a consensus among the parties. However, this proved impossible to attain, because Siad Barre unequivocally rejected all of the suggestions presented at the meeting. While the meeting did not lead to an agreement, nevertheless Siad Barre promised not to attack Ethiopia. And then, when Siad Barre attacked Ethiopia, we considered ourselves obligated to Mengistu, whom we had persuaded to attend the peace conference which had taken place in Aden. One fine day, all of this will come to light. You can believe me or not, but some day this will be common knowledge. The outward geopolitical character of these events is completely at odds with the essence of the true facts.
I had the privilege to accompany Fidel Castro at the time of his meetings with the leadership of the Soviet Union. These were attended by Brezhnev, Kosygin, Podgorny, who had just returned from Africa, Gromyko, and Rusakov. And it was we who insistently urged the need to render military assistance to Ethiopia. This was the situation, to be distinguished from that in Angola, because in this case preliminary negotiations were taking place. But in these negotiations it was Fidel Castro himself who first advocated military assistance. History will bring all of this to light.
Source: TsKhSD, f. 5, op. 84, d. 584, ll. 1-27; translation by Bruce McDonald; document obtained by Carter-Brezhnev Project and on file at National Security Archive.
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