CONFIDENTIAL
12. When I mentioned our conversation on this question to Ambassador Armacost at the end of Sir O Wright's dinner on Monday night, he listened intently to what I said. As we rose to leave the table, he said with a smile All we shall ask of you, if it comes to the point, is that you should remember the Falklands!
13.
I may say that I am left with the feeling, in the light of this revealing remark and of the tenor of my conversations with Motley, that we shall not move the US Administration by any further expressions of our concern at possible military intervention in Nicaragua, however high may be the level at which they are uttered. The Americans are perfectly aware of our views on this question by now and they have their own anxieties as to how to find legal justification for an intervention if it becomes necessary, not to mention how to handle a hostile Congress. I believe that, having got our points across, we would do well to shut up on this issue for the moment, saving any further representations until the eventuality we fear appears imminent. How we would handle the matter then would, I imagine, depend anyway as much on political as on juridical factors.
GW Harding
CONFIDENTIAL
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