Kissinger’s Visit Eagerly Awaited

U.S. Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger is expected to bring disengagement proposals and a list of Israeli prisoners of war held in Syria when he arrives here tomorrow from Damascus. Assuming that Red Cross visits to the POWs are also arranged, that could set the stage for the beginning of negotiations leading to disengagement talks between Israel and Syria, sources here said today.

It was also reported today that Defense Minister Moshe Dayan will participate in the talks here this week with Kissinger at the request of Premier Golda Meir. She also asked Foreign Minister Abba Eban and Deputy Premier Yigal Allon to join in the talks with Kissinger. Dayan is a member of Mrs. Meir’s care-taker government but has said he will not join her new government which she expects to submit to the Knesset for approval next Monday.

Sources here said that once Israel has a POW list and disengagement proposals from Syria it would probably reply with a disengagement counterplan of its own in general outline. The Cabinet is expected to convene in special session to discuss such a plan either while Kissinger is here or as soon as he leaves. Kissinger will go to Cairo from Jerusalem but is expected to return here later in the week to learn Israel’s ideas and report the reactions of President Anwar Sadat of Egypt to the earlier suggestions. Sadat is expected to play an active role in Israel-Syrian disengagement negotiations.

(Before his departure from London to Damascus, Kissinger told a press conference: “One of the key conditions for disengagement talks between Israel and Syria is the release of a list of the Israeli prisoners of war in Syria. This demand must be met before talks could begin. I am hopeful that during my visit to Damascus, I shall be able to secure the list, after which we could proceed with the negotiations.”)

Israel’s Ambassador to Washington, Simcha Dinitz, said on a taped television interview today from Washington that if Israeli-Syrian disengagement talks were to be successful, the Syrians would have to understand that disengagement in the north need not necessarily follow the pattern of disengagement in the south, meaning on the Egyptian front. Political, military and strategic circumstances are quite different, he said.

According to Dinitz, both Israel and Syria are now prepared in principle to begin talking and he hoped that Kissinger’s visit will mark the beginning of disengagement negotiations with Syria. But he said they would not be concluded during the present round of Kissinger diplomacy and predicted that further visits by the Secretary of State were possible. Dinitz said that Washington totally divorced the disengagement question from the Arab oil embargo issue and as far as Israel is concerned that is the right approach.

Preparations were under way today for Kissinger’s arrival. Israeli and American security officers inspected the landing runways, terminal buildings and other facilities at Ben Gurion Airport where the Secretary of State will land tomorrow, Kissinger will be received at the airport by Eban, by Dinitz who is flying in from Washington today, and by U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Keating.