Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger will leave Sunday on his fifth trip to the Middle East in the past six months. Disengagement talks between Israel and Syria are considered the primary reason for his Journey. But he is scheduled to stop in Geneva on his way to the Middle East for a meeting with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko.
The meeting with Gromyko is generally regarded as a gesture to the Soviet Union’s insistence that it have a greater voice in decisions on the Middle East. Including the Israeli-Syrian disengagement process. Kissinger is expected to assure the Russians that they are not being excluded from American Middle East diplomacy.
State Department spokesman John King said he could not provide details of Kissinger’s itinerary. In addition to visiting Syria and Israel. where he is expected May 2. the Secretary is expected by official U.S. sources to visit Algeria, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other countries, possibly Kuwait, before he returns here.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
