The White House acknowledged today that Dr. Henry Kissinger and Hafez Ismail, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s personal emissary, had met briefly while Ismail was at the White House last Friday for his meeting with President Nixon, but indicated Dr. Kissinger does not have a “primary” role in the American government’s participation in the Middle East situation.
Deputy Press Secretary Gerald Warren told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Dr. Kissinger. President Nixon’s National Security Advisor, “dropped in” for “the last five minutes or so” of the Nixon-Ismail talks at the White House and later spoke “for a few moments” with Ismail before the latter departed for the State Department to meet Secretary of State William P. Rogers.
In an interview last Sunday night on NBC News, Dr. Kissinger said that the role that the U.S. can play, will be decided “after Prime Minister Meir has been here, and we have been able to assess the result of the conversations with King Hussein with Mr. Ismail and then with Prime Minister Golda Meir,” He added “I will certainly not turn my primary attention to the Middle East.”
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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.
