Long Haul Settlement Talks Start; Israeli Officials Seem Disappointed

Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger flew to Ankara this afternoon for a brief go at the Greek-Turkish crisis over Cyprus before returning here for further conferences with Israeli leaders tomorrow evening on a second-stage Israeli-Egyptian agreement in Sinai. Kissinger will fly to Aswan, Egypt at noon Wednesday for further talks with President Anwar Sadat and is expected back in Jerusalem some time Thursday.

The Israeli Cabinet will meet at noon tomorrow while the Secretary is in Turkey, but, according to a well-placed source, it will not be called upon for decisions at this stage but will simply hear a full report on the first two negotiating sessions with Kissinger here which took place last night and this morning.

Kissinger arrived from Damascus two hours later than expected, which indicated that he had a rough time in his eight hours of talks with Syrian President Hafez Assad, The Israeli and American negotiating teams assembled at Premier Yitzhak Rabin’s residence for a working dinner after 10 p.m. local time.

Informed sources said the conversations were almost wholly confined to general observations on the Middle East situation. Kissinger and Rabin breakfasted privately this morning after which the two teams met at the Premier’s office for an extensive review of Egypt’s present position. According to all indications, Cairo’s position is a long way from the barest minimum that Israel could consider.

TALKS WILL BE DIFFICULT, PROLONGED

While this was not unexpected, the mood among Israeli officials today seemed one of disappointment and let-down. “The beginning of the beginning of a long and arduous negotiation,” was how one well-placed Israeli source described the initial meetings with Kissinger. The source said that “Egyptian ideas and elements” had been examined but there were no “proposals or plans.” The stress of Israeli officials seemed to be that this round of talks will be prolonged and difficult.

“We cannot say at this point that an agreement will emerge,” they said today, in contrast to the prevailing view before Kissinger’s arrival that while the bargaining would be long and hard, it would very likely end in success.

Kissinger, emerging from this morning’s session, seemed irritated when reporters asked him if there was still a 50-50 chance of success. He informed the newsmen crowding around the Premier’s office that he was not about to give a day-by-day assessment of chances in percentage points. He said only that the parties were “carefully examining, in a friendly spirit,” all aspects of an accord.

The central point of contention at this juncture seems to be Israel’s determined demand for a direct, mutual, contractual, bilateral political pact with Egypt ending the state of belligerency between the two nations. So far, Egypt has balked at this demand, not only publicly but apparently in the private exchanges between Sadat and Kissinger.

A CARDINAL POINT, NOT A GAMBIT

Well-placed Israeli sources said that this fundamental Israeli condition was forcefully stated at this morning’s session and that it was made clear to Kissinger that it was not a bargaining gambit but a cardinal point of Israel’s conception of any kind of broad settlement involving its withdrawal from the strategic Mitle and Gidi Passes and the Abu Rodeis oilfields.

Another factor aggravating the situation is Syria’s intransigence. President Assad, who proposed a Syrian-PLO joint military command and political union over the weekend, is believed to have insisted in his talks with Kissinger that if there is to be a second-stage agreement it must be on all three Arab fronts.

Sources here cautioned newsmen against assuming that Kissinger was attempting to bring Syria into some kind of tripartite accord. They stressed that the present negotiations are over a bilateral agreement between Israel and Egypt. The implication was that Kissinger’s aim is to keep Syria out but to keep it, if possible from thwarting his efforts with Egypt and Israel.

Kissinger was said to be fully aware that the narrowly based Rabin government is in no position to offer far-reaching concessions on the Golan Heights in a new interim accord with Syria and win the approval of the Knesset and the Israeli public for such a move, After last night’s working dinner, Foreign Minister Yigal Allon appealed to newsmen not to indulge in speculative reportage. He admitted that his appeal sounded “naive” but urged the press to “trust us.” He promised that whenever any new information emerged, the negotiators would inform the media.