The future of detente between the United States and the Soviet Union, the situation in the Middle East and the issue of emigration will be among the topics Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and Soviet leaders will be discussing in Moscow this week. The Secretary is due in the Soviet capital tomorrow.
According to reports arriving here from the USSR. Russian leaders are anxious to continue the relationship with the U.S. established during the term of former President Nixon. The feeling on the part of Soviet leaders that this relationship has a good chance of continuing and strengthening was indicated in an article in the Soviet government newspaper, Izvestia.
Viktor Kelin, a senior Foreign Ministry official and author of the Izvestia article, quoted Kissinger as saying that “detente is a continuing process and not a final state which can or cannot be attained at any precise moment.” Kelin described this as a justified idea and noted that it was “better to have stage-by-stage detente than a freeze-over and a return to a state of tension which could be more dangerous as the world build-up of nuclear weapons grows.” The quotation from Kissinger was a remark the Secretary made in Washington in res- sign, critics of detente who have argued that it has produced little in the way of concrete results and appeared to be faltering.
Kissinger is expected to clarify the letters he and Sen. Henry M. Jackson (D.Wash.) released last Friday dealing with Soviet emigration policies and U.S.-USSR trade relations. While there has been no official comment from the Soviet Union on these letters, Soviet Communist Party Secretary Leonid Brezhnev said last week that the U.S. has no business intervening in an internal Soviet matter in trying to link trade with emigration.
PROBLEMS EXPECTED ON MIDEAST ISSUE
On the Middle East, Kissinger is expected to brief Brezhnev on his recent talks with Israeli Leaders and express disappointment at the Soviet Union’s announced decision to support the cause of a Palestinian homeland. He is also expected to urge Soviet leaders to give closer consideration to U.S. strategy in the Mideast where it is seeking to bring the parties together for further peace negotiations.
Observers in Washington note that this may be a difficult area for Kissinger in view of the thaw between the USSR and Egypt in the aftermath of the talks last week in Moscow between Soviet officials and an Egyptian military mission and reports that the USSR will soon resume arms shipments to Egypt. Reports from Cairo today indicated that Egypt and the Soviet Union will sign a five-year economic agreement, the implementation of which will begin in 1976. According to Egyptian Foreign Trade Minister Fathi Matbouli a trade protocol between the two countries for 1975 will designed in Jan. after a visit to Cairo by Brezhne.
The talk between Kissinger and the Soviet leaders will take place against the background of the Arab summit in Rabat, Morocco this weekend where they will discuss ways of closing ranks on such compelling issues as the Mideast, oil prices, and the role of the Palestine Liberation Organization in future Mideast peace talks.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
