Frank Talk and "Ambiguity"

With a scrutable smile of confidence and a quip of the lip--"I only visit friendly capitals," he told a welcoming wag who asked him why he did not stay longer in Washington--Henry Kissinger returned last week from a ten-day 18,400-mile tour of the Middle East and Europe. The Secretary of State assured President Ford and members of Congress that he had created the momentum necessary to break an impasse in the disengagement negotiations between Egypt and Israel. The test will come in two weeks when he returns to Cairo and Jerusalem for a further round of more exacting shuttle diplomacy. But even with the momentum revived, Kissinger admitted privately, the odds on a second-stage success in his step-by-step approach to negotiations are still no better than fifty-fifty.

Blunt and Frank. TIME Diplomatic Editor Jerrold L. Schecter, who traveled with Kissinger, reports that the Secretary not only displayed his customary "constructive ambiguity" during the Middle East talks, but also was direct, open and on occasion harshly frank in two capitals he visited. In Cairo, Kissinger acknowledged President Anwar Sadat's argument that Egypt could not pledge Israel nonbelligerency so long as the Sinai remained occupied. In reply, the Secretary pointed out that Israel tacitly accepts Egyptian sovereignty over the Sinai, that Jerusalem regards all occupied territories as negotiable--but that there was a political price tag on each withdrawal step, which the Arabs would have to accept.

Kissinger was equally blunt about the perimeters of realistic concessions in the course of a five-hour talk with Syrian President Hafez Assad in Damascus, and his odds on success probably dropped there as a result. Assad fears that Syria might be closed out of negotiations by Kissinger and Sadat. Complaining about "turtle-pace diplomacy," he has begun to press other Arab leaders for their support of either simultaneous talks on all fronts or a return to formal negotiations in Geneva.

Kissinger's problem is that Israel is not likely to offer much to Syria before Geneva, particularly since it is more difficult to negotiate territorial adjustment on the Golan Heights than on the broad Sinai desert. Kissinger, who had hoped to keep the Syrians soothed until he could finish Israeli-Egyptian negotiations, got scant help last week from Israeli Premier Yitzhak Rabin. Visiting settlements built on the Golan Heights after the 1967 war, Rabin stressed their security value for Israel and added: "We did not build settlements here in order to evacuate them."

The frankest talk of all, however, occurred in Jerusalem in what Kissinger likened to "a family quarrel, loud and noisy." The Secretary outlined the effect of recession on U.S. policy and the Washington leadership crisis that Watergate caused, sometimes in terms so specific that even State Department aides blanched at his candor. Kissinger's remarks were directly aimed at Defense Minister Shimon Peres, Israel's most adamant hawk (see following story) and at Rabin, who was Israel's ambassador in Washington during the Nixon Administration. Without threatening the Israelis, Kissinger stressed the point that the situation in Washington has changed since Rabin returned home. The U.S. is still committed to Israel, but the American mood (see box, next page) is for reduced military assistance and for compromise rather than confrontation.

Amid all the frank talk, shapes of a possible second-stage settlement emerged last week. Although Egypt clearly cannot make a non-belligerence pledge at this point for fear of alienating other Arab nations, Kissinger envisages the two sides agreeing to an aide-memoire that would spell out further steps both sides would take in the disengagement process. The U.S., or possibly the United Nations, might serve as a guarantor of peace between Egypt and Israel until such time as relationships "normalize." After returning to Washington last week, Kissinger ordered studies on the ramifications of an American peace guarantee, which President Ford must ultimately decide upon.

Loaded Tankers. Another consideration was the replacement of about 80,000 bbl. of oil per day, or 50% of its requirements, that Israel is pumping out of the Abu Rudeis oilfields in Sinai--a rate that by present estimates will exhaust the fields within five years. In Zurich, Kissinger met with ski-vacationing Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran, whose refineries already provide about 50% of Israel's oil needs. The Shah was willing to make up the difference from Abu Rudeis if the fields were given back to Egypt. "Once the tankers are loaded," he said grandly, "where it goes is of no importance to us." The Israelis, however, are nervous about being so totally dependent for oil on Iran, which in the past has given lip-service approval to the Arab cause. They also worry that all then" oil would henceforth have to come by tanker through the strait of Bab al-Mandab along the Red Sea--a route that could easily be blockaded by Somalia, Southern Yemen or the Moslem rebels in Eritrea.

In another Swiss meeting, Kissinger sought Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko's support in maintaining the Middle East momentum. Kissinger's suggestion that the Russians back off from their persistent demands to reopen the Geneva conference was more or less rebuffed. Gromyko was more interested in other discussions on SALT, U.S.Soviet trade, the European Security Conference, and Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev's visit to Washington next summer. On Geneva, however, the two could agree only that the conference should reconvene "at an early date." In the involved semantics of diplomacy, Kissinger's aides insisted, it signaled that the Soviets were not likely to obstruct the next round of negotiations.

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