The Kissinger Shuttle: In the End, a Mission Impossible

"Unfortunately, the differences on a number of key issues have proven irreconcilable. We, therefore, believe a period of reassessment is needed so that all concerned can consider how best to proceed toward a just and lasting peace." With that admission of failure, read to newsmen in Jerusalem by State Department Spokesman Robert Anderso. Henry Kissinger's latest venture in shuttle diplomacy came to an abrupt and unhappy end. After 17 days of almost continuous commuting between Israel and Egypt, the Secretary suspended his efforts to get a second-stage disengagement and returned to Washington to report to President Ford and Congress. The official statement said that Kissinger would "remain in close touch with the Co-chairman of the Geneva Conference," referring to Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko.

In Aswan Egyptian Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmy told newsmen that "because of the intransigent position of the Israelis it was not possible for [the Secretary] to succeed. Consequently, the Israeli government bears the sole responsibility for this failure." Answered an Israeli government spokesman, "Egypt refused all offers, and that ended the talks."

Intense Meetings. Neither side faulted Kissinger for not having done his best to break the deadlock. Nonetheless, the Secretary failed to make the "conceptual breakthrough" essential to an agreement. Israel wanted more in the way of a nonbelligerency pledge from Egypt, in return for sizable pullbacks in the Sinai, than Sadat was willing to concede. No matter how he pressed the opportunities. Kissinger failed to budge either side. The Secretary's mission ended in Jerusalem, where he had a series of intense meetings with Premier Yitzhak Rabin, who felt the issue so urgent that he summoned his cabinet to a rare Sabbath session. In the end, the Israelis decided that they could not make any further concessions.

In the Secretary's mind, at least, one complicating factor in the latest round of shuttle diplomacy was declining

American prestige, caused by the troubles facing the present Saigon and Phnom-Penh governments. The Secretary told newsmen traveling with him aboard the shuttle that both Arabs and Israelis had brought up the unavoidable question of the long-range credibility of U.S. commitments. Indeed, one Israeli diplomat last week confirmed the fact that "the cloud of Viet Nam increases our intransigence." The Syrian Baath party newspaper Al Baath, with Israel obviously in mind, crowed that "the U.S. is not a reliable friend." But most diplomatic experts doubted that the problems of Indochina had any real impact on Kissinger's peace-keeping mission.

At most, it was only a secondary complication. The main difficulty for Kissinger on his latest shuttle was that Egypt and Israel, despite their oft-expressed interest in making joint progress toward peace, had such widely varying diplomatic goals in the negotiations.

Sadat cannot sign a declaration of nonbelligerency until there is a final peace settlement involving Syria and the Palestinians as well as Egypt. Israel, for its part, demanded some specifics on nonbelligerent intentions from Egypt before withdrawing further in the Sinai. The Egyptians wanted a military document that would extend the disengagement agreement it signed with Israel in January 1974; the Israelis insisted that any new deal involve political agreements, in order to make an expensive and risky military pullback worthwhile.

No Bun. From Sadat's viewpoint, the big problem was Israel's insistence upon particular agreements concerning nonbelligerency, which, curiously, reminded one Western-schooled Egyptian diplomat of a cheeseburger. "Supposing," he told TIME Correspondent Wilton Wynn in a kind of Big Mac analysis, "that you ask me for a cheeseburger and I flatly refuse to give it to you. You then say, 'O.K., don't give me the cheeseburger. But at least give me the bun. And perhaps the mustard and the cheese and the onion--and don't forget the meat.' That is how Israel is now trying to get what in effect would be nonbelligerency."

The Israelis felt that Egypt was unwilling to give them the bun, much less anything in the way of condiments to go with it. Last week they made a number of concrete proposals to Kissinger to offer Sadat. Some were sincere, some were obviously unacceptable propaganda ploys, but all were rejected. Items:

> Israel proposed that any second-stage agreement remain in force for at least eight years. Egypt placed no time frame on an agreement but insisted upon a one-year limit for a U.N. peace-keeping forces mandate in the Sinai.

> Israel suggested an open-bridges policy in the Sinai similar to the one that allows traffic to pass between Jordan and the occupied West Bank. Egypt said no.

> Israel proposed a joint operation of the Abu Rudeis oilfields in the Sinai as a symbolic gesture that the two nations might cooperate on future peaceful projects. Once again. Egypt said no.

> Israel asked for an end to the economic boycott that Egypt, along with other Arab nations, has imposed since 1948. Egypt's reply was that it might ease the boycott on U.S. firms, among them Ford and Coca-Cola. 'That's some swap," grumbled one Israeli diplomat. "Israel self-destructs to save Coca-Cola."

Nonetheless, there were a few small shifts in positions during the week that gave Kissinger reason to carry on the talks for as long as he could. Sadat told Kissinger that he was prepared to assent to a "declaration of non-warlike intentions" in which both sides would agree not to use force to "settle the Middle East crisis." The Israelis felt that the formulation was too vague for comfort.

Israel indicated willingness to pull back in the key Mitla and Gidi passes of the Sinai--not to the eastern rim as Egypt wants, but at least far enough back to put the Suez Canal out of range of Israeli artillery. In return, Jerusalem wanted the Egyptians to reduce the size of their armed forces, which would have allowed the Israeli government to cut military enlistments by six months and thus demonstrate signs of peaceful progress to civilians at home.

The failure of the shuttle obviously increased the chances of another Arab-Israeli armed conflict. At week's end, the atmosphere on both sides was tense. The logical next step, if peace is to be preserved, would be another session of the Geneva Conference--even though it could easily turn into a propaganda-laden shouting match, with the Russians egging on the most radical Arab participants. Nonetheless, it appeared that a return to Geneva was almost the only alternative to a shooting war.

Mendes-France, an elder statesman of the moderate left, noted last week: "In a good or a bad sense, what happens in Portugal will set a precedent in Spain, in Italy, in Greece, and will not be without deep echoes in France." The Stuttgarter Zeitung wondered aloud last week: "Are we in the West already encircled by the Communists?" Yet in the northern tier of Europe, Communists are blocked by strong democratic parties at the center as well as by sophisticated voters. Indeed, if there is a threat at all in countries like West Germany, it comes from the right, where young people turned off by the radical movements of the early '70s are increasingly active in conservative university groups.

Ironically, some Communists are also worried about the leftist turn in the southern tier. Ever since the Allende debacle in Chile two years ago, party leaders have been vividly conscious of the danger that lies in too sudden a leftward lurch of democratic nations. Fortunately for the West, Moscow also seems to realize that too much Communism too soon in the southern tier would be a decidedly mixed blessing. Yet goals remain the same. Although it has not in any way abandoned its aim of helping foster a steady erosion of the NATO alliance, the Soviet Union has clearly warned comrades in the southern tier to make haste slowly.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.