Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger declared here tonight that the energy crisis was not simply a product of the Arab-Israeli war but the inevitable consequence of the explosive growth of world-wide demand outrunning the incentives for supply. He called for collective efforts to solve it. The Middle East merely made a chronic crisis acute, but the crisis had been coming in any event, he said addressing the Pilgrim Dinner in his honor at the Europa Hotel.
“The United States proposes,” Kissinger said, “that the nations of Europe, North America and Japan establish an energy action group with a mandate to establish within three months an initial action program for collaboration in all areas of the energy problem.” He said the energy producing nations “should be invited to join it from the very beginning in matters common to both sides,”
The Secretary of State, who will be visiting Arab countries and Israel this week preparatory for the Geneva peace conference, described U.S. involvement in the recent Middle East war. “The United States demonstrated great restraint until the Soviet effort reached the point of massive intervention,” Kissinger said.
“Once that happened, it became a question of whether the West would retain any influence to help shape the political future of an area upon which Europe is even more dependent than the United States. We involved ourselves in a resupply effort, not to take sides in the conflict, but to protect the possibility of pursuing after the war the objective of a just and permanent settlement which some of our allies have urged on us ever since 1967.”
Kissinger said that “The Middle East crisis illustrates the importance of distinguishing the long-range from the ephemeral.” He said in that connection, the three key issues were “was the war primarily a local conflict or one with wider significance; was the energy crisis caused primarily by the war or does it have deeper causes; can the energy crisis be solved by anything but collective action?”
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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.
