PRESIDENT HOUPHOUET-BOIGNY. Mr. President, the inauguration of our land station for communications, following the example set by your great country, gives me the occasion to reiterate our gratitude for the contribution you have made to our development, and the inauguration of the Kossou Dam last week in the presence of your personal representative1 gave a visible demonstration of the personal interest that you have shown in our development. The people of Ivory Coast will never forget this.
1 On November 18, 1972, Edgar F. Kaiser of Lafayette, Calif., and John F. Root, United States Ambassador to the Ivory Coast, represented President Nixon at the dedication of the Kossou hydroelectric dam.
I also wish to avail myself of this opportunity to express our appreciation for your persistent search, for a peace that is real, just, and lasting, and I express the aspirations of all people in voicing the hope that these efforts will be successful, that you will have good help and the protection of the Everlasting.
PRESIDENT NIXON. Mr. President, I greatly appreciate the opportunity to talk to you personally by telephone through this historic new satellite communication. While I have not had the opportunity of meeting you personally, my wife still speaks of her very warm memories of the wonderful welcome she received when she was in Ivory Coast last year.
On my own visit to Ivory Coast during the 1960's, I was enormously impressed by the economic progress, by the tremendous development of your country. Mrs. Nixon reported to me--and other friends like Edgar Kaiser, who was recently in your country--that the Ivory Coast is one of the finest examples in the world of a new country making great economic progress under dynamic leadership of its President.
I can assure you, Mr. President, that during the remainder of my term of office, these next 4 years, that you can always count on not only the United States Government to cooperate with your Government for progress for both of our people, but you can count on my personal interest in your country and in your own success, because peace, greater opportunity, progress, justice for all people in the world, wherever they may live, is our common goal. I look forward to working with you toward the achievement of that goal, not only in your country but in the great continent of Africa and all over the world.
PRESIDENT HOUPHOUET-BOIGNY. Thank you, Mr. President.
PRESIDENT NIXON. Mr. President, I hope to have the opportunity at some time to meet with you personally during my second term in office.
PRESIDENT HOUPHOUET-BOIGNY. I will be very happy to respond to your invitation.
PRESIDENT NIXON. Thank you very much. Give our best wishes for the Christmas season and the New Year to all of your people.
PRESIDENT HOUPHOUET-BOIGNY. Thank you. We have the same fervent wishes for you and your family.
PRESIDENT NIXON. Thank you. Merci beaucoup.
Note: The telephone call began at 11: 12 a.m. The President spoke from Camp David, Md. President Houphouet-Boigny spoke in French, and his remarks were translated by an interpreter.
The conversation inaugurated communications satellite service for the Ivory Coast via its first ground station near Abidjan.
Richard Nixon, Telephone Conversation With President Felix Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/255736
