Joseph J. Sisco. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, arrived here tonight rather unexpectedly. He will report to Israeli leaders on the outcome of the talks held today between Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and President Anwar Sadat of Egypt. Sisco was scheduled to arrive here only after Kissinger had completed his Middle East tour.
However, apparently because of the importance the U.S. attaches to today’s talks in Cairo, Sisco took a plane to Cyprus from where he flew to Lod Airport. He was accompanied by Harold Saunders who, together with Sisco, was a member of Kissinger’s delegation in Cairo. The American Ambassador Kenneth Keating, who was scheduled to lecture tonight in Haifa, was called urgently, and proceeded to Lod Airport to receive Sisco. His arrival was so unexpected that the Foreign Ministry was not informed of the fact till after Sisco arrived.
The outcome of the talks in Cairo will have an important bearing on the statement Premier Golda Meir will make to the Knesset next Monday. It was because of the report from Cairo that she asked the opposition to agree to the postponement of the meeting scheduled for today. Now with Sisco’s report, Mrs. Meir will be in possession of the facts needed for her statement.
(In Washington, State Department spokesman Robert J. McCloskey declined to detail the meaning of Sisco’s and Saunders’ trip to Israel. He said only that “we have developed some ideas here” in conversations with the Egyptian government on “immediate and longer range problems and we wanted to discuss these with the government in Israel.”) (By Yitzhak Shargil)
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.
