Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger today claimed “success” on Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union and warned the Arab oil producing countries that U.S. policy towards them would change if their embargo continued. He made his statements in response to questions at the Yale-Harvard-Princeton Club here after he had addressed it briefly on world affairs particularly the forthcoming meeting in Washington of European countries and Japan on the energy problem.
Responding to a query on Soviet-American detente, Kissinger attacked without direct reference the Jackson Amendment pending in the Senate. He also indicated general satisfaction with Soviet policy abroad. “Our concern with detente has been directed to moderate Soviet foreign policy behavior,” he said, “and that has been on the whole substantially successful with occasional aberrations which is inevitable when nations have client states all over the world.”
NUCLEAR WAR DANGER CITED
Continuing, Kissinger stated that “because of the threat of a nuclear holocaust” between the superpowers, the United States has pushed for easing the arms race and seeking to bring about “certain links in the commercial and cultural fields.” When appropriate, he said, “we have used our influence, and successfully, as in the case of Jewish emigration, but we shall not play with the danger of nuclear war and not turn this into an issue of domestic debate. The problem of nuclear war must be solved if mankind is to survive.”
Kissinger did not amplify his point on emigration. In the past 34 months an estimated 80,000 Soviet Jews have emigrated. However, proponents of the Jackson Amendment and activists for Soviet Jewish emigration, particularly in the United States, but also in many other countries, have felt that their demands have caused pressures on the United States government and other governments to persuade the Soviet Union to ameliorate its rigid emigration policy.
About the oil embargo, Kissinger said that he had been “led to expect that progress in Israeli-Arab negotiations would lead to lifting of the oil embargo.” But “to maintain the embargo now,” he said, in the light of U.S. mediation efforts “must be construed as a form of blackmail and considered highly inappropriate by the United States. It cannot but affect the attitude with which we would have to pursue our diplomacy.”
Later, when asked about Saudi Arabia’s support of Syria’s position on disengagement on the Golan Heights, Kissinger said that he has had “no official information to the effect Syria requires Israel to withdraw to its 1967 borders.” The U.S., he said, has declared its readiness to help bring about implementation “of the relevant UN resolutions” and it has made “exclusive efforts to bring about every political improvement in the Middle East that has occurred since Oct. If now pressure tactics are continued they can be only construed as blackmail by whichever country uses them but I repeat we have not received any official word to that effect,” Kissinger said. (Joseph Polakoff)
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