A Hopeful Start for an Impossible Goal

Even for the most audacious U.S. Secretary of State in recent history, last week's journey had an appearance of overreach about it. En route to Peking for a twice-postponed discussion with Chinese Premier Chou Enlai, Henry Kissinger proposed to make five stops in as many days in Arab capitals along the way. Kissinger's intention: to sort out and select options for Israel and its Arab adversaries, after face-to-face discussions with the principals involved. For the accompanying newsmen (see box page 43), the trip quickly became a kind of "if this is Wednesday, it must be Cairo" frenzy. But by Friday, when Kissinger left the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh to fly to Pakistan, he had apparently accomplished an almost impossible goal. Egypt and Israel agreed on a plan to firm up the shaky ceasefire, and U.S. officials buoyantly predicted that serious peace talks might begin before the end of the year.

In a series of conferences that began in Washington before his departure and reached a climax at a three-hour meeting with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in Cairo, Kissinger hammered out agreements that seemed to satisfy both Sadat and Israeli Premier Golda Meir. Among the terms:

1) Acceptance by Israel of a permanent corridor through Israeli-held territory on the west bank of the Suez Canal to resupply Egypt's beleaguered Third Army (TIME, Nov. 5) with such items as blood plasma and food. Under terms of the agreement, United Nations forces, rather than Israeli troops, will control checkpoints on the key Cairo-Suez road. It will be the responsibility of the U.N. soldiers to supervise the movement of "nonmilitary supplies to the east bank."

2) Agreement by Israel that it will relax the siege of the Egyptian town of Suez at the south end of the canal. There, 2,000 wounded soldiers and civilians have been trapped by the Israeli military operation that cut off the Egyptian Third Army.

3) After the U.N. checkpoints are established and resupply operations are under way, there will be an exchange of prisoners of war, beginning with the wounded. The Israelis, who pressed heavily on this point in Washington discussions with Kissinger, anticipate the return of 340 men, most of them captured in the early hours of the war when Israel's defensive positions along the Suez Canal and the Bar-Lev Line were overrun by the Egyptians. In return, the Israelis are prepared to surrender nearly 8,000 Egyptian prisoners, including 600 officers and 50 pilots.

The cease-fire deal, which Kissinger made public in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, also specifies that military officers of the two sides will confer in order to establish formal truce lines between the opposing armies. This proviso seems to settle what could have been a major sticking point in any settlement: the lines were so complicated and so difficult to sort out and define after the armies stopped fighting that it would have been almost impossible and certainly impolitic for U.N. observers to step in and establish different ones. Conferring among themselves, Israeli and Egyptian officers ought to be able to arrive at workable truce lines.

Key Concession. One point tentatively agreed on by Israel and Egypt but not set down specifically was the ending of a blockade of the Red Sea at Bab el Mandeb. Officially, the Egyptians deny that any such blockade exists. In fact, Egyptian ships have been patrolling the strait, mines have been laid there, and a small fleet of merchantmen is tied up in the Israeli port of Eilat as a result. The blockade was the cause of a fiery meeting of the Israeli Cabinet last week. After accepting Kissinger's terms, the Cabinet had second thoughts about the nonmention of the understanding about the blockade. The eventual decision, however, was to accept the U.S. proposal "in principle."

The terms fulfilled the spirit, if not precisely the letter, of Security Council Resolution 338, the joint U.S.-Soviet proposal passed three weeks ago in an effort to end the Middle East war. The key concession appeared to have been made by Sadat: in return for the corridor to his Third Army, he dropped his insistence that Israeli forces withdraw to positions held at the time of the first ceasefire, on Oct. 22, before negotiations could begin. It was a measure of Sadat's increased prestige and power since the war began that he could afford to make such a compromise without running into a storm of protest.

Kissinger's success in getting both sides to buy his cease-fire package clearly indicated that both Israel and Egypt recognize the indispensable role that the U.S. will play in a peace settlement. Last week's cease-fire agreement, moreover, is only the first step in a lengthy--and obviously delicate--series of steps that Kissinger hopes will lead to lasting peace in the Middle East. After this could come a formal peace conference to negotiate the territorial and political disputes that divide Israelis and Arabs. According to the terms of the ceasefire, the "appropriate auspices" for such a conference would be the United Nations Security Council. But essentially the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., the two powers that got the warring sides to stop shooting and start talking, will exert the strongest pressure, even if they do not speak in the loudest voice.

A new U.S. diplomatic approach to Middle East problems--primarily including a tough realism about Israel and Washington's role as Israel's broker --came through last week in Kissinger's discussions across the Arab world.

Kissinger conferred with three kings --Hassan II of Morocco, Hussein of Jordan and Feisal of Saudi Arabia--as well as Tunisia's President Habib Bourguiba. But the key city was obviously Cairo, and Kissinger's 32-hour stopover there was just as obviously a huge success. After a three-hour discussion with Sadat, who was wearing the uniform of an Egyptian army field marshal, Kissinger and the Egyptian President emerged smiling from the Tahra Palace to face a swarm of skeptical newsmen. Sadat was asked what he thought of the progress of war and peace in the Middle East. "I want to have an answer to that from our good friend, Dr. Kissinger," the Egyptian President said with a broad smile. "I think we are moving toward peace," answered Kissinger benignly. Replied Sadat: "He said that, and I agree with him."

Significant Move. As a kind of good-will offering, Sadat agreed to upgrade diplomatic relations between Cairo and Washington. It was a significant move, since the Egyptians acknowledged that the U.S. was still supplying arms and equipment to Israel. Relations between the U.S. and Egypt had been broken off early in the Six-Day War of 1967 by Sadat's predecessor, Gamal Abdel Nasser. He charged--wrongly, as it turned out--that planes from U.S. aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean had helped Israeli jets attack Egypt at the start of the war. Since then, U.S. interests in Egypt have been represented by Spain, while India took care of Egyptian affairs in Washington.

The significance that both sides put on the resumption of diplomatic relations became quickly evident. A curious arrangement was worked out: the two embassies will remain "specialinterest sections" of other nations' embassies, under the usual plan carried on when countries fall out but want to continue some kind of contact. But these sections will be headed by ambassadors, and not mere charges.

For Egypt it will be Sadat's principal press adviser, Ashraf Ghorbal, 48, a tough-minded but genial expert on diplomacy who holds a doctorate in political science from Harvard (where he did his thesis on a favorite Kissinger subject, regional security arrangements) and who has served in Washington before. During the recent fighting, Egypt's propaganda was more realistic than it has ever been in 25 years of unrest and conflict. The generally factual reporting was due largely to Ghorbal's insistence.

In Cairo, meanwhile, the U.S. will be represented by Herman F. Eilts, 51, who like Kissinger is a German-born naturalized American. Eilts, who studied at Ursinus College and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, is one of the State Department's ranking Arabists, with a permanent Foreign Service classification of minister. He speaks fluent Arabic, was posted to Teheran, Jidda, Aden, Baghdad, London and Tripoli before serving for five years as Ambassador to Saudi Arabia. After leaving that post in 1970, Eilts joined the faculty of the Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pa., where he wrote eruditely on such obscure facets of U.S. Middle East policy as President James Buchanan's contacts a century ago with the feudal Sultan of Muscat and Oman.

Ominous Intelligence. The stunning swiftness of the cease-fire deal caught other Middle Eastern nations by surprise. Syrian President Hafez Assad, who had not been consulted when Sadat decided to accept the U.S.-U.S.S.R. ceasefire, was upset by his erstwhile ally's acceptance of last week's terms. Assad was particularly angry because only a few days before, the Egyptians had threatened to resume the fighting in order to relieve the Third Army and force the Israelis from the west bank of the canal. There were ominous intelligence reports that the Soviets were resupplying the Egyptian Second Army, which is sitting in Sinai north of the Israeli-encircled Third. There were also reports, which Washington doubled, that the Soviets were shipping nuclear warheads into the area to mate them to the 200-mile-range "Scud" ground-to-ground missiles already in Egypt.

Syria's Assad, whose own forces were still facing Israeli armor ensconced along the Golan Heights, was left to work out his own arrangements. The Israelis anxiously sought some kind of stand-down that would allow them to recover an estimated 120 soldiers and pilots held by Syria. By week's end, however, no prisoner agreement had been reached with Damascus.

For Israel, the cease-fire plan that had been worked out in Washington and Cairo represented a critical decision in its national life. The realities of the agreement were starkly plain: they demonstrated that while Israel had won a military victory in the Yom Kippur War, it was in serious danger of losing the diplomatic battle that followed.

The problem was that Golda Meir's government was not strong enough abroad to demand more than it got under the Kissinger agreement, particularly with the U.S. exerting tremendous pressure on Israel. With national elections less than two months away, Mrs. Meir was in increasing trouble at home. According to knowledgeable U.S. sources, twice in the course of her negotiations with Kissinger in Washington she accepted certain proposals only to have them turned down when they were cabled back to the Israeli Cabinet at home. (Israeli government sources deny that there was any such rebuke, and insist that Mrs. Meir would have resigned if she had been voted down on a key issue.)

Even before the cease-fire arrangements were completed last week, they were under fire in Israel. The hero of the war, General Ariel ("Arik") Sharon, had become the government's major adversary in peace. In an extraordinarily blunt interview with Charles Mohr of the New York Times, Armor Expert Sharon reproved leaders of the Israeli army for not exploiting the openings west of Suez that his tanks had carved out. Sharon was a leading opposition candidate for the Knesset before he was recalled to active duty; his parliamentary criticisms if he wins the election are certain to be continuous and biting.

One of the underlying difficulties for Mrs. Meir was the heavy loss in casualties and prisoners of war that Israel suffered. In a country of 3,200,000 people, the loss of 1,854 men killed in action was equivalent to 130,000 for a country the size of the U.S. Announcement of the figures set off a nationwide wave of mourning (see box page 48).

Sporting Metaphor. One very uncertain factor in the complicated equation is how the Russians will respond. Kissinger's caravan through the Middle East, as well as the results he achieved, were reported briefly and without comment in the Soviet Union last week. The Soviets, celebrating the 56th anniversary of the October Revolution,* seemed to have put the Middle East aside temporarily. Nonetheless, there appeared to be some anxiety in the Kremlin over the diplomatic success that the U.S. and its Secretary of State were having--in a sense at Soviet expense. One Moscow editor called the U.S. attempt to serve as "sole mediator" unrealistic and reached for a sporting metaphor to explain the Russian view. "In a boxing match," he said, "each side has its second. There have to be two seconds, not one working with both sides." The Soviets were hampered by the fact that they have had no diplomatic relations with Israel since the Six-Day War. Thus they were unable to emulate Kissinger and enhance their prestige in the Middle East by working both corners.

As for the Arabs, other leaders besides Syria's Assad were obviously uncertain about the Kissinger agreement and its implications for them. Among those who flew from capital to capital last week in a frenzied series of conferences and consultations that left jet contrails all across the Mediterranean sky was Jordan's King Hussein, who made swift visits to Syria, Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Kuwait. Algerian President Houari Boumedienne dropped into Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, Kuwait and Riyadh in an effort to arrange an Arab summit. Libya's Muammar Gaddafi warned of a return to war and urged the defeat of Israel; his cries were echoed by Iraq's President Ahmed Hassan Bakr.

Still, on either side of the present truce lines in the Suez there was ultimately a feeling that Kissinger's opening had given the Middle East its best chance for peace in 25 years. All that was needed now was daring in carrying out the details to match the daring that had set them in motion.

* Watching the annual military parade in Red square last week, Western observers spotted two new weapons. One was an intercontinental ballistic missile that they immediately dubbed "Rudolph" because of red paint on the nose of the warhead. The other was a small tank, armed with a rocket launcher, which can be airlifted and dropped with airborne troops.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.