◆ SpookStack

f President Amin At approximately 8.00 p.m. last night Sir Clive Rose • // brought through from the Cabinet Office a copy of President /» Amin's telegram to the Commonwealth Secretary General about the Prime Minister's personal and confidential letter to him. I L transmitted this immediately to the Prime Minister at Chequers. r^ The Prime minister asked me to enquire what Sonny Ramphal was proposing to do about it; and we discussed our response, which the Prime Minister thought should be to make no comment on it. I spoke to Mr. Ramphal who confirmed that he had received the telegram himself and had instructed that the copy, as requested, be sent on to Mr. Callaghan. He was proposing to take no action at all on the telegram. He observed that the message itself was out of character with Amin's usual conduct. It was low key. It had a veiled threat in it, admittedly, but it seemed designed to maintain uncertainty as to Amin's intentions while preparing the ground for his not coming at all. (Stephen Wall of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Private Office subsequently commented that this intention to maintain uncertainty was validated by our own intelligence reports from Africa.) Sonny Ramphal said that all he would say to the press, if asked, was that he had received President Amin's telegram; had passed it on to Mr. Callaghan as requested; and wished to make no comment on the substance of it. Mr. Ramphal said that there would be no doubt that the text of the telegram would become public very quickly because of its wide distribution and he had no doubt that Amin would release the text sooner or later from Kampala, if indeed he had not already given it to Reuters there. Mr. McCaffrey telephoned to say that The Times had contacted him with a report that Kampala Radio had said that President Amin had received a personal and confidential letter from the Prime Minister advising him not to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in London. I told Mr. McCaffrey of the receipt of the telegram and we concluded that this first report from Kampala was simple a trailer to publication of Amin's telegram to London. Subsequent newapaper calls to No.10 and the FCO indicated that this was correct and that Kampala was putting out that a message had been sent to Sonny Ramphal protesting that the Prime Minister was aiming to keep out of the CHGM those who spoke frankly about international issues. Mr. McCaffrey and I then agreed (the Prime Minister not being immediately available for consultation) that we should take the following line with the press: (a) We confirm that the Prime Minister had written the "personal and confidential" letter to President Amin. (b) We could not discuss its contents, since it was confidential, but (c) the Prime Minister had advised President Anin that it would not be appropriate for him to visit this country. /(d)