This file contains dialogues between Saddam Hussein and Iraqi ambassadors in foreign countries. This period contains an Iraqi ambassador comment on the Zionist influence in the United States. He stated that the American brains were conducting the Zionism in the United States. He added that the Jewish immigration whether to Israel or to the United states would create a threat on the Arab Countries. Saddam commented that the Soviet Jewish immigration to these states would decrease because the regime has changed in the Soviet Union. He said that Israel wished the Berlin wall would move to the States of the Middle East. Their target was to eliminate the wall separating them from the Arab States. He added that the democratic changes were continuously occurring. He gave an example about a protest in Czechoslovakia. It leads to the resignation of 11 Ministers of the Czechoslovakian government. Saddam answered that when a protest occurred in the Yarmuk City, Iraq, the Revolutionary Command Council considered carefully how to deal with the protest. . Israel was afraid from the Iraqi evolution to a technologically developed country. Saddam stated that every new power appearing in the world might threaten the two existent enormous poles. That was the reason Iraq fought. This period contains the Saddam declaration on the ambassadors' freedom to express their opinions. He also noticed that they were well prepared for the discussion. He added that the good preparation for the conferences was the key of their success.

The memoir of Trần Quang Cơ (1927-2015), former member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) and First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), brings to light the intense diplomacy among great powers and regional players over the continued conflicts in Indochina after the unification of Vietnam as well as the bitter disagreements within the Vietnamese leadership over the country’s political priorities during the period of 1975-1993.

Cơ put together his memories and thoughts on “many sensitive developments” in Vietnamese foreign relations that he believed had been “intentionally or unintentionally” forgotten (rơi rụng) in the state-endorsed history “to ‘smooth over’ (tròn trĩnh) the historical record.”  Completed in Vietnamese in 2001 (updated in 2003) and informally circulated on the internet, Merle Pribbenow’s English-translation makes this valuable historical source available to wider audiences.

On July 2, 1957, US senator John F. Kennedy made his perhaps best-known senatorial speech—on Algeria.

Home to about 8 million Muslims, 1.2 million European settlers, and 130,000 Jews, it was from October 1954 embroiled in what France dubbed “events”—domestic events, to be precise. Virtually all settlers and most metropolitan French saw Algeria as an indivisible part of France. Algeria had been integrated into metropolitan administrative structures in 1847, towards the end of a structurally if not intentionally genocidal pacification campaign; Algeria’s population dropped by half between 1830, when France invaded, and the early 1870s. Eighty years and many political turns later (see e.g. Messali Hadj’s 1927 speech in this collection), in 1954, the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) launched a war for independence. Kennedy did not quite see eye to eye with the FLN.

As Kennedy's speech shows, he did not want France entirely out of North Africa. However, he had criticized French action already in early 1950s Indochina. And in 1957 he met with Abdelkader Chanderli (1915-1993), an unaccredited representative of the FLN at the United Nations in New York and in Washington, DC, and a linchpin of the FLN’s successful international offensive described in Matthew Connelly’s A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria’s Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era (2002). Thus, Kennedy supported the FLN’s demand for independence, which explains its very positive reaction to his speech.

And thus, unlike the 1952-1960 Republican administration of Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969) that officially backed the views of NATO ally France and kept delivering arms, the Democratic senator diagnosed a “war” by “Western imperialism” that, together with if different from “Soviet imperialism,” is “the great enemy of … the most powerful single force in the world today: ... man's eternal desire to be free and independent.” (In fact, Kennedy’s speech on the Algerian example of Western imperialism was the first of two, the second concerning the Polish example of Soviet imperialism. On another, domestic note, to support African Algeria’s independence was an attempt to woe civil-rights-movement-era African Americans without enraging white voters.) To be sure, Kennedy saw France as an ally, too. But France’s war was tainting Washington too much, which helped Moscow. In Kennedy’s eyes, to support the US Cold War against the Soviet Union meant granting Algeria independence. The official French line was the exact opposite: only continued French presence in Algeria could keep Moscow and its Egyptian puppet, President Gamal Abdel Nasser, from controlling the Mediterranean and encroaching on Africa.

This article, published in a classified Vietnamese Ministry of Interior publication, asserted that Vietnam’s economy required international cooperation and support, saying “no country can close its doors and still expect to be able to develop and make progress.” The article also states that the Ministry was now gradually allowing identified “spies” to enter Vietnam so that their activities could be covertly surveilled by the Ministry’s counter-espionage officers

In this issue, Zhou Enlai congratulates the Prime Minister of Morocco, Mbarek Bekkay, and the Prime Minister of Tunisia, Tahar Ben Ammar, after both countries won their independence. One section announces a Sino-North Vietnamese civilian air transport service agreement; while another features a Sino-Soviet agreement to develop various industries and build a railway between Lanzhou and Aktogay (now in Kazakhstan). Finally, other sections discuss managing cooperatives, higher education, and provincial administrative concerns.

Ho Chi Minh reports on his trip to Europe, explains his impressions of various leaders in the Socialist bloc, and discusses Tito's politics in Yugoslavia with Khrushchev. They also discuss economic development and the Geneva Accords.

A comprehensive overview of North Korean-East German ties as well as North Korea's overall foreign relations in light of a visit to the GDR made by Kim Il Sung.

Zhou and Enlai and Ali Sabry discuss developments in Algeria, prospects for the Second Asian-African Conference, Egypt's tenuous food situation and trade relations with countries such as Argentina, Canada, and the US, and the latest news from Vietnam.

Nehru gives a detailed report on his visit to China and Indo-China. He first gives a summary of the issues and topics he covered in discussions in China with Zhou En-Lai and Mao, which covered a broad range of subjects including China's Five Year Plan, and various foreign policy issues. Nehru then describes his visit to Indochina, where he speaks with Ho Chi Minh (five days after he takes control of Hanoi) in North Vietnam, and also tours South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.