he cable fills Brzezinski in on a conversation Henze had with Saudi Arabia’s Vice Foreign Minister Abdal Rahman Al Mansouri.
“I am tired of Somalia,” Al Mansouri told Henze, according to the secret memo. “We have wasted a lot of time and money on it and we have nothing to show for it. We do not care about the Ogaden. We are only interested in communism in this region. We want the Soviets and Cubans out of the region.”
Al Mansouri is adamant that his country’s reasoning for pushing Somalia to war had nothing to do with Mogadishu’s claims over the Ogaden region:
“We did not care who had the Ogaden; we only wanted Mengistu defeated. If the Russians and Cubans had not come in to help him, he would have been defeated.”