U.S. Officials Say Waldheim’s Bleak Outlook on Interim Talks is ‘strange’ Concede Proximity Talks in

United States officials said today that it was “very strange” that Secretary General Waldheim had called the prospects for an interim Suez Canal settlement hopeless at this time. They pointed out that in a television interview yesterday Secretary of State William P. Rogers noted that Egypt had not yet been asked by the US to agree to the proximity talks that Israel has accepted.

“We haven’t asked the Egyptians yet, so how do we know the Egyptians have turned them down,” an American official observed. “Realistically, of course,” he conceded, “it doesn’t look very good for the proximity talks,” He said that if the Jarring mission started to show life, the US would defer to it. “It doesn’t really matter,” he explained, “as long as there is some talk going on. We have no pride of authorship.”