United States-Soviet bilateral talks on the Middle East conflict are about to resume here, a State Department source said today. He said that Secretary of State William P. Rogers, now returning from a NATO Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Rome, has an appointment next week with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly F. Dobrynin. Sources here said that Mr. Rogers will ask the Soviet government bluntly to state exactly what its interests are in the Middle East. The bilateral talks were held intermittently in Washington during the past year, mainly between Mr. Dobrynin and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs Joseph J. Sisco. They paralleled the talks between the United Nations Ambassadors of the U.S., Soviet Russia, Britain and France in New York. According to informants here, the bilateral talks were being reactivated because of growing Soviet intransigence at the Four Power parlays. At the last Big Four meeting on Tuesday, the Soviet Union reportedly was “more intransigent and stiffer” than ever and Moscow is providing “imprecise and unsatisfactory” responses to U.S. inquiries about Soviet intentions in the Mideast. The United States is under urgent pressure from Israel to sell her more combat jet war planes in light of the Soviet military involvement in Egypt. State Department sources said today that the U.S. will likely reply to Israel’s request within a few weeks.
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