Inevitably in the initial sparring between heavyweights the customary stances are taken by the antagonists. So it is here at the start of the Soviet-American summit conference. The familiar contradictions continue with hardly a trace of abatement. Thus, although both President Nixon and President Nikolai V. Podgorny in toasting each other last night at the Grand Kremlin Palace spoke of world peace and bilateral cooperation, they also adhered to positions which underly the existing tensions.
Thus, in their implied references to the Middle East and other areas of rivalry, Nixon at the official dinner welcoming him said the US seeks “a peaceful world in which each nation determines its own destiny.” This seems to mean that the United States continues to oppose imposition of an agreement on Israel and its neighboring states.
On the other hand, Podgorny responded by declaring that “in our practical activities” the Soviet officials will be “guided and intend to be guided unswervingly by the principles” set forth only three days ago by the Communist Party central committee led by Secretary General Leonid I. Brezhnev.
POSSIBLE BIG POWER SOLUTION
Those “principles,” reported only yesterday in Pravda shortly before Nixon’s arrival in Moscow, pointed out that Brezhnev had said the USSR supports “the Arab peoples’ righteous struggle for eliminating the consequences of Israeli aggression” and stood for a “political settlement of the conflict.” At the banquet, Podgorny also said people have an “inalienable right to decide their destinies themselves without interference and pressures from outside,”
But in the first party for the American press contingent, given earlier at Moscow’s City Hall, an affable Russian newsman-turned-diplomat who formerly served in Washington, with a striking knowledge of the latest American idiom, made clear to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency what the actualities seem to be, to him. “The Middle East can be solved only by us,” he said after voluntarily opening the discussion. “The Arabs and Israelis have been at it long enough. We have got to tell them this very plainly–do it our way and shut up.”
Now the words of a young man serving as a host at a party are hardly commensurate with the statements of leaders of a superpower, but he seemed to express the realities that the Soviet government has been steadfastly demanding in practice–a Big Power solution imposed on the Middle East.
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.
