U.S. Says Plane Incident Will Not Block Efforts to Get Talks Under Way

The Libyan airliner incident is not clouding the meetings with President Nixon tomorrow by top level Egyptian emissary Hafez Ismail and a week from today by Israeli Premier Golda Meir, the State Department emphasized today. Ismail, internal security advisor to Egyptian President Anwar Sadat is arriving here from London this afternoon as scheduled, Department spokesman Charles Bray announced.

Asked by a newsman if the incident will cloud the forthcoming talks; Bray replied: “No. This, (question) will take us both in the realm of speculation that has not been broached on any official level. What is important to say in this regard is on what will get under way and that is, views will be exchanged” for a discussion of negotiations between the parties in the Middle East. “We were prepared and remain quite prepared to get the talks off the ground,” Bray said.

Bray was asked whether President Nixon’s message of condolence yesterday constituted a “rebuke to Israel” as some newsmen had interpreted it. “I would not put that construction on it,” Bray responded, reiterating his earlier comment that it was based on “humanitarian” considerations. Bray said that the messages by the President and Secretary of State William P. Rogers expressing condolence to the Cairo government were sent “because the majority of the passengers were Egyptian and it simply seemed the human thing to extend condolences to those most affected.”

Earlier, at the White House, during his news conference centered on his visits to Hanoi, Peking and Tokyo, Dr. Henry Kissinger said in response to questions what while in Peking the Middle East was included in general discussion on world affairs. But the Presidential advisor refused to be drawn into the Libyan plane affair, saying that he had been concentrating on Asian matters for the past two weeks and wished to confine his remarks to his trip.