NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE BULLETIN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79T00975A030600010034-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 14
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 4, 2006
• Sequence Number: 34
• Publication Date: March 20, 1978
• Content Type: REPORT

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Monday 20 March 1978 CG NIDC 78/065C
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NATIONAL SECURITY INFORMATION
Unauthorized Disclosure Subject to Criminal Sanctions
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Top Secret
DIA review(s) completed.
(Security Classification)
CIA-RDP79TOO975AO306~~11OQ3 cret 219
(Security Classification)
Aff
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National Intelligence Daily Cable for Monday, 20 March 1978.
25X1
25X1 The NID Cable is tor e purpose
senior US officials.
ISRAEL-LEBANON: Military Sitrep
ISRAEL: Begin's Popularity Up
CHINA-US: Improving Relations
NIGERIA: Voting Controversy
Page 1
Page 2
Page 4
Page 6
FRANCE: Election Results
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ISRAEL-LEBANON: Military Sitrep
//The Israelis expanded military operations in
Lebanon over the weekend with the aim of clearing Palestinian
orces from the remainder of the area south o the Litani River.
The UN,
meanwhile, has adoptea a rerorurrv'n to send a orce into
southern Lebanon. Arab hard-liners are meeting in Damascus to
discuss the Israeli action, and the Arab League secretary gen-
eral has called for a summit.//
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I //Israeli military authorities say that their
troops have met little resistance and that Palestinian forces
south of the Litani are collapsing.// Israeli Chief of Staff
General Gur, indicated that the operations were in response to
continued shelling of Israeli border settlements from areas
outside Israeli control.
//Israeli authorities told the US Army attache
in Tel Aviv that their units will halt on the heights running
along the coastal plain, some 3 to 5 kilometers from the shore,
and will stay out of the port city of Tyre. The forces will
thus be out of range of direct fire from Tyre and other villages
along the coastal plain. The Israeli Navy apparently will con-
tinue to patrol offshore.//
Farther north, the Israelis apparently intend to reach
the high ground overlooking the Litani River; from there they
will be able to block guerrilla infiltration into the south and
keep Palestinian positions to the north under observation.
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The Arab states are engaged in a flurry of political
activity aimed at putting up a show of resisting the Israeli
invasion, although they may have been preempted by the UN Se-
curity Council's adoption of a resolution yesterday calling for
an Israeli withdrawal and the introduction of a UN force in
southern Lebanon.
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The foreign and defense ministers of Algeria, Libya,
and South Yemen, as well as representatives of the Palestine
Liberation Organization, arrived in Damascus yesterday, at
Syria's invitation, to discuss a means of "defeating the Israeli
aggression." The conferees, however, will probably fail to make
concrete decisions and may fall to wrangling. Libya, for instance,
has made known its objection to a UN force, while Syria supports
the UN resolution.
As the hard-liners meet in Damascus, other Arab states
are trying for a less radical approach to the problem. Jordan has
sent representatives to several Arab states, presumably to pursue
King Husayn's call for an Arab summit.
The Arab League secretary general called for a sum-
mit meeting on Saturday and hopes to convene it this week.
Eight states have thus far responded favorably; a majority of
the 21-member Arab League is required to convene a summit.
ISRAEL: Begin's Popularity Up
Bolstered by a resurgence in personal popularity,
Israeli Prime Minister Begin arrives in Washington today prob-
ably convinced that he is in a much stronger position to deal
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with the US than he was just two weeks ago. In the short run,
his stand on peace negotiations is ZikeZy to be affected Zess
by what the US administration says or does than by what he
Zearns firsthand concerning the amount of support he can stiZZ
count on among American Jews and Israel's supporters in Con-
gress.
As A result of the Palestinian terrorist raid and
Israel's subsequent intervention in southern Lebanon, the Begin
government is no longer under fire at home for mishandling US-
Israeli relations and peace negotiations with Egypt. Dissension
within the Israeli cabinet has quickly faded into the background,
and nearly all of the country's political parties have rallied
behind the government.
Only a few Israelis question the wisdom of Israeli
forces remaining in Lebanon. Indeed, the Israeli public not only
wholeheartedly supports the move but is convinced that it will
not jeopardize peace negotiations.
Begin doubtless will seek to turn recent events, in-
cluding this show of domestic solidarity, to his advantage dur-
ing his visit to Washington. With the consequences of the Pales-
tinian raid still fresh in the US public mind, Begin is likely
to make a strong pitch for understanding and support for his
negotiating stance--especially his opposition to an independent
Palestinian state. In private meetings with US officials he may
also hope to focus primarily on resolving the Lebanese problem
and to give short shrift to the broader issues affecting peace
negotiations.
Begin has made it clear in his public statements that
he will not moderate his peace plan. At most, he and Foreign
Minister Dayan, who will accompany him, are likely to offer
some cosmetic changes in the text of the statement of principles
currently under discussion. They also may seek to paper over
the differences that have emerged between Israel and the US
over UN Security Council Resolution 242.
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Sadat's minimum conditions for moving ahead with bilateral ne-
gotiations and still appear to cling to the hope that he will
be prepared to conclude a separate peace agreement if satisfac-
tory wording can be worked out on the statement of principles.
Dayan, for example, implied that Sadat has softened his stand
in the past few weeks and now no longer appeared to be insist-
ing on direct Jordanian participation before political negotia-
tions can resume.
all of the Sinai to Egypt if his peace plan is rejected continue
to appear occasionally in the Israeli press and in statements
by government officials. These warnings presumably are aimed at
obtaining some tactical leverage in the current situation and
at probing Sadat's intentions.
CHINA-US: Improving Relations
The Israelis remain unsure of Egyptian President
Hints that Begin will withdraw his offer to return
I //Chinese party Chairman Hua Kuo-feng outlined
Chinese policy toward the US Zast month at the National People's
Congress and expressed Peking's willingness "to expand contacts
between the peoples of the two countries and promote mutual
understanding and friendship." This statement is the first top-
Zevel acknowledgment of the decision Peking evidently made
late last year to promote forward movement in several aspects
of its relations with the US despite the continued impasse
over the Taiwan issue.//
//Peking has sought to expand contacts with US
diplomats and defense attaches abroad in recent weeks. Sub-
stantive exchanges between senior US and Chinese diplomats in
Mali and Syria occurred for the first time earlier this month.
In Poland, the Chinese Ambassador solicited a courtesy call
from the newly arrived US Ambassador and said that "broader
contacts" between the two embassies could be discussed.//
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//Discussion between a US defense attache in Yugo-
slavia and a Chinese counterpart at the Chinese Embassy in
Belgrade in mid-January was the first such meeting we are aware
of on official Chinese premises anywhere. In the past two months,
Chinese military attaches have initiated social contacts with
US attaches in a number of other capitals.//
//In January, the Chinese allowed four Americans--
- 1 _ ...'-4 1, ~n with the
three active-aut.y mili L:aiy
Defense Department--to accompany a delegation from the Canadian
National Defense College on a tour of Chinese military facil-
ities. This was the first time the US had participated in ex-
changes of a purely military nature between China and another
country. Chinese officials indicated at the conclusion of the
visit that the US could participate in future exchanges with
the Defense College.//
//Peking, however, is maintaining a "principled"
An invitation
lved
i
.
nvo
position on occasions when protocol is
for the US Ambassador in Manila to attend a state dinner on 12
March for visiting Chinese Vice Premier Li Hsien-nien was with-
drawn by the Philippines Government at the last minute--appar-
ently at Chinese request.//
//The manner in which Peking handled the recent
release of an ethnic Chinese US citizen arrested in 1970 for
"intelligence activities and smuggling" is another demonstration
of Peking's desire to promote progress in bilateral relations.
In discussing this case, a Chinese official mentioned the
special interest Ambassador Woodcock had shown in it and said
"relations between our two countries are improving step bystep;
as our relations develop, these problems will be solved."//
//China's recent favorable response to a longstand-
the US Liaison Office
f
or
ing request for additional facilities
in Peking may be yet another indicator of Peking's effort to
promote some forward movement in Sino-US relations.//
//Peking apparently expects US citizens to com-
prise a significant portion of the increased flow of tourists
to China. The quasi-official China Travel Service recently in-
formed US officials that it is planning for as many as 10,000
US citizens to visit this year. This fi ure does not include 25X1
Americans officially invited to China.
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NIGERIA: Voting Controversy
A serious controversy may be shaping up over Nigeria's
recently completed voter registration campaign. The campaign
is an important step in the military regime's plan to return
the country to civilian rule by October 1979. There are indi-
cations that the registration figures--in effect a census--
could fuel tribal and regional disputes, as have previous cen-
sus exercises. In the past, Nigeria's competing ethnic groups
have always seen such counts as determining their political
weight in the government.
The federal electoral commission has the politically
sensitive task of judging the acceptability of the registration
results against the regional and tribal relationships estab-
lished by the 1963 census, the only post-independence census
to be officially accepted and the regime's benchmark for plan-
ning purposes. The final results of the census in 1973 were
not accepted because the preliminary results caused political
controversy.
The commission has announced only that the total of
48 million voters registered is 20 percent larger than projected.
It has declined, pending "further revision" of the figures, to
release registration totals for each of Nigeria's 19 states.
The registration campaign ended last month.
This delay, along with the unexpected size of the
electorate, suggests that the population has grown much more
rapidly inone part of the country than in the others since
the 1963 census. The commission's failure to announce state-by-
state figures is likely to arouse popular suspicions that some-
thing is amiss and that the results are being manipulated.
This could jeopardize the political acceptance of the figures
when they are finally announced. Nigeria's three main ethnic
groups, the Hausa Fulani, the Ibo, and the Yoruba, and various
minority tribes have strong opinions about what the results
ought to show. Each group is likely to oppose results that
would place it at a disadvantage.
I I The voter registration may heighten Nigeria's tradi-
tional north-south differences. The population in some of the
10 states created from the former northern region has probably
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grown disproportionately in size. The preliminary results of
the 1973 census showed that nearly two-thirds of the population
lived in the north and that four northern states, in which
Nigeria's traditionally dominant Muslim Hausa Fulani group is
preponderant, contained just over half of Nigeria's total
population.
The 1973 census was even more unacceptable to south-
ern tribesmen than the 1963 version, which placed just over
half the total population in the north and ensured continued
political domination of the Hausa Fulani aristocracy. Contro-
versy over the 1963 census was a contributing factor to the
ethnic tension that led to the overthrow of the first civilian
government in 1966 and to civil war a year later.
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FRANCE: Election Results
I The unexpected heavy swing back to the center
in yesterday's election will be widely interpreted in the coming
months as a stunning refutation of Socialist Leader Mitterand's
theory that the Socialists can win by allying themselves with the
Communists while controlling them through greater strength.
Instead of winning the hundred or so seats in the
National Assembly they expected, the Socialists won only a
few. The Communists won 14 seats more than in the last elec-
tions--a gain equal to that of the Socialists.
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Mitterrand has already blamed the Communists for
losing the election by their attacks on the Socialists. The
end result of the polemics on the left was to frighten away
potential Socialists voters in the white-collar middle class.
Mitterand's continued control over his party will depend on his
ability to find an electoral perspective for the future. In
any case, the Socialists face a lengthy period of internal acri-
mony and rethinking their goals.
The Communist Party, having confirmed it near equality
with the Socialists at the polls, probably will try to keep the
Socialists allied with it by stressing the importance of left
unity. At the same time, they are likely to reemphasize their
democratic "Eurocommunist" identity in order to reassure the
embittered Socialists.
President Giscard's win provides him with the oppor-
tunity for bold measures to help overcome the polarization that
still evenly divides France. When he addresses the nation of
Wednesday, he is expected to name a new prime minister; he may
choose popular and nonpartisan Health Minister Simone Veil or
a prominent liberal Gaullist.
~ Giscard will still face a difficult battle with
Paris mayor Chirac for control of the National Assembly
majority, now evenly split between Gaullists and Giscardians.
In the past, Chirac seemed to be the last best hope for con-
servative Frenchmen in a rising tide of leftist sentiment.
Although Chirac emerges weakened from the elections, he is
still a powerful party leader, now, however, he is challenging
a president who is at the peak of his popularity--and who may run
for reelection in 1981.
I //Giscard is also likely to face immediate la-
bor demands to be raised by the Communist unions.
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Chinese Party Chairman Hua Kuo-feng opened a national
science conference in Peking on Saturday that the New China News
Agency described as the largest in the history of the nation's
science and technology. Virtually the entire Peking-based mem-
bership of the Politburo attended the opening session. The
6,000 delegates will review Peking's priorities and plans for
the development of science and technology to 1985.
Vice Premier Teng Hsiao-ping declared in his keynote
speech that modernization of science and technology is the
"crux" of China's effort to catch up with the West by the year
2000. Among other things, he directed party committees that
are in charge of scientific activities to give scientists
greater authority in deciding technical matters.
I I Teng also paid tribute to the help of "foreign friends."
us 5e fore the conference opened, the Chinese news agency re-
ported the contributions of Chinese-American scientists to
h
i
t.
ina s sc
entific research.
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(Security Classification)
Top Secret
(Security Classification)
OF ' AFAff
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