Nixon, Ziegler & Kissinger on Middle East peace process

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The question is, I'm pretty well covered on everything except how I would handle the question of moving toward, in other words, the Ofsted Center.

In other words, now that you've met with Hussein, Ishmael.

Well, I have to say this, that I

We've had very frank talks.

We've been constructing.

This is however, we didn't realize the

We're still very far apart.

We don't want to raise great mature hopes, but at the present time, we think these talks are very instructive.

Thank you.

We don't want to get the ideas because we're rushing around and you're talking to Ishmael and the team in charge.

There's a great big diplomatic initiative and they'll ask every week, well, how are you doing?

We don't expect results soon.

It's been a very long competition there and it takes time and negotiations are going to be easy.

Well, Monday's okay, but I do think that they're annoyed at the development of the city.

Tomorrow.

The off-dead center question.

Yeah.

In other words, the President said when Dishnail was here, the objective was to move on.

Try to get this discussion on.

Senator, she said that too.

We can certainly discuss the prospects of negotiations with the ladies.

I'll say what Brent said.

Well, you might have to give what I had to give to Brent.

I'm here to serve so that we don't raise

What do you mean by saying this?

Very frank talks that have been constructive.

Various parties have stated their position.

We don't want to raise premature hopes.

I think talks have been very destructive and paving the way for negotiating some of these differences.

Some of the...

Yes, they may expect that we don't want to raise hopes, and then go to the last thing I said, that this has been a long...

It's been a long confrontation.

Negotiations on matters such as this are not easy or instant, and there's no...

They should not expect an immediate result.

That's fair.

I see.

Immediate result.

But on the other hand, we...

We always follow the policy of not raising hopes in difficult areas, but we're working on the problem.

Why do we say that?

We are talking to various parties.

And the ultimate line is that the settlement must be

ultimately reached by the nations involved.

I wouldn't get into it.

Stay away from that.

I have to say that when they ask me.

You have to say it.

But you should say it.

I always have to say that we won't.

You say that, the Egyptians did.

The Israelis will love it if you say that.

The Israelis will adore it.

You see, the Egyptians...

I don't need to say that.

I didn't just leave it here.

We remain ready to work with the parties toward a peace.

Well, that goes already too far again, what you have here this time.

We are talking to the parties.

We don't want to raise your hopes.

This is a long confrontation, and we should not expect an immediate solution.

However, we are talking to the parties, and we will continue to talk to the parties.

We have had these discussions, and these discussions, with all the parties concerned, will continue.

How's that?

Now, that's just good.

Okay.

It will continue.

That drives the chips right back into the public channel.

Oh.

Well, I can leave that all.

We've talked to all the parties.

And we'll respect your name.

They do try to be mediated.

I mean, if they really try to, I think you could say, at some stage, there has to be direct talks between the parties.

I mean, that we've always said, that the Egyptians have agreed to.

But you don't want to make that decision.

Don't volunteer.

At some stage, there can't be a settlement in this area.

Without direct talks.

That's right.

That's good.

All right.

Good.

Fine.

Perfect.

You're going to breathe now.

Very well.

Now, the reporters from Israel are going to sit here.

Right.

Okay.

I'm done.

That wasn't tough.

Wait.

The blood of John.

position that he talked to the Egyptians and Russians, they would have been hanging from the ceiling.

That's been a fixed position.

I mean, you sort of, and all of them.

So, of course, they have had a lot more confidence in you.

Well, they figured we're not going to screw them.

Now, did they, is the position that they had suggested really something that they had?

They had a position in my ability at all.

Well,

Their position, now I think their position has liability, and I think the position itself, the Egyptians will almost certainly accept where the hang-up will occur.

The only hang-up in their position is going to be, they cannot keep the withdrawal, I don't know whether you, but she said after the pass, that's quite as much as they've ever talked about it.

I don't think you plan to sit down and go through that.

Well, that's my point.

I feel that the lack of liability and the trouble with their position is they will only let police forces cross the canal.

The Egyptians will want to put some military forces across.

That's going to be a hang-up.

All the others, I think, are acceptable.

A big hang-up is going to occur, and I don't know how to look the other way.

one general president, we'd be all free.

But what we can get Cisco to do in about two weeks, it shouldn't happen all that eagerly, is to propose a procedure for talks on an interim settlement.

That will get us into a lot of procedural crap for four weeks.

By that time, I will have had another talk with the Egyptians.

If the Egyptians give us

give us vague general principles, then we can really move full speed into the substance of the other position and do it in our channel.

Yeah, as far as we're concerned, your main problem is getting the principles vague enough to be a very legal substance.

That's right.

If we can get vague general principles, then we're in business.

You don't think you can probably get that?

I can't tell you.

This last session, we've achieved one thing.

The Egyptians are planning to get us involved, and they will have to pay some crunch.

It would be unthinkable that they'd come to us now.

And I've sent you our word.

It's coming to you.

You've judged for yourself the memo of the conversation.

They'd be more specific in detail now.

I wouldn't expect that, as you told Ishmael, why would they give away their position?

the first session.

So they said they'd go back and study it and come back to us.

If they give us a, if they have a movement, then at some point they may have to squeeze the Israelis into something.

We've got to tell them we're not squeezing them.

So that's the biggest thing.

The position itself for an interim agreement is still going to be tough, but that, I think, is manageable.

Good.

You know, as a matter of fact, I was thinking of this conversation.

We do that with our three parents.

Now, this is James.

And the way that it can be ordered, that matter, Johnson, you know, Johnson is.

For God's sake, say it.

The problem is, the problem is really what somebody that's in college says.

There's got to be something.

You've got to go around.

You've got to hang out with something good at the beginning, then come back with something else, and then come back.

And you knew exactly where you were going.

I mean, basically, you cut their requests on production by two-thirds.

They'd ask for 300.

They're down to 100.

You didn't give them any specific commitments on their part, but you made them like it.

That...

And also that you prepare your meetings very carefully.

And then we also say we weren't linking anything, knowing that we will.

I mean, last night, I mean yesterday, she was like a tiger, but by your careful preparation, then suddenly with which you're conducting conversations, never a note in front of you, you take that for granted.

You take care of it.

He needed, he's supposed to be an expert in foreign policy, but only he understood that.

And of course, Johnson, in addition, didn't care.

Johnson was bored by it.

Was he?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I guess so.

I mean, I've had people, I've had them myself, but Johnson, one of Johnson's assistants told me that once he was talking to an Arabian who was talking in Arabic.

And he pressed a button, and one of his assistants came and said, bring me some papers I can read while this man was talking Arabic before the translation started.

And I didn't run away.

The guy probably understood English.

That's what he said to a friend of his today.

A gentleman's attitude to sit there reading your own papers.

He could read terribly.

Crude.

Now, you never that if you don't have to be.

But it's important to get across to them, Henry, and I hope you talk to Javits and the rest of them and even Jackson.

By God, if the Jewish economy in this country makes Israel exit permits, the condition for the Russian initiative, let's beg them to hurt it.

That will not work.

Let's beg them.

The immigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy.

And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern.

It may be a humanitarian concern.

Well, we can't go out in the world because of that.

It'd be an outrage, but we cannot make out of a gas chamber that would go far from that.

There is no unrestricted right of immigration.

If the Indians don't let parties down, it would never occur to us to...

to have a, to attach a rider to a foreign policy decision.

And I think that the Jewish community in this country on that issue is behaving unconsciously.

It's behaving treacherously.

I find... Why can't we get Jackson to get off the damn thing?

He feels it now.

He isn't supposed to be Jewish.

He's supposed to be Israelis.

Well, of course he's taking a hell of a lot of money now.

And he, exactly, he's thinking of financing his campaign in 76.

But Chavez, I'm going to have a talk with Chavez.

I'm going to tell him that it is uncomfortable for the Jewish community to do that.

You see, what they will do is to work that way with the radical, the nuthead, basically the anti-Semitic, I may say, anti-communist in the Senate and the House, a lot of our anti-Semitic, who want to steer the Russians for other reasons.

You know, we've got to get most favored nation.

Don't address it in that space.

We have screwed Russia.

I mean, you have outmaneuvered Russia in a way that is almost pathetic.

And if you said, what did he get?

He held still while you settled the Vietnam War, essentially on our terms.

He's gotten kicked out of the Middle East.

We've had Europe more or less pacified.

We've got a brilliant settlement.

which removed that pressure point.

What has he got?

Promise of MSM, which he hasn't got.

Promise of gas fields, which he hasn't got.

So it really, he had some forcing out with the nuclear treaty, which he also won't get.

The only problem we're in is our emphasis.

Build, build, build, build, build.

Boy, we better watch out.

that he is not a soldier.

I want you to order the defense intelligence bunch to be sure to see what the government thing shows.

I mean, I should settle with those facts, not just severe.

It would be very helpful, Mr. President, if we will have a briefing on the strategic balance at the beginning of the solved discussion.

Good.

If you would indicate some disquiet.

That's right.

And if you would say, for two reasons, one, you don't want to be

Just what they're doing.

And second, that your experience has been in the last strategic programs.

We don't have bargaining chips.

Clemens and Mora can then pick up.

I will.

To put the heat on Richardson.

And Richardson is smart enough and ambitious enough.

Once he knows what you're saying.

Plan it for at least a couple of hours.

Be sure that's a two-hour meeting so that we can have a very good discussion.

Because on the issues, frankly, unsolved, I'll pretend, but they're getting so intrusive.

You have to handle that.

I don't really think you want to get yourself too much involved.

No, because any time we do, I... Well, well, it's just, I just don't feel... Because we don't have this bastard Smith in there this time, which is a big help.

We've got this time.

Well, how next chance was it that it'd be pretty good?

It'd be damn good.

Yeah, he's a gentleman.

Smith, you know, why?

I don't know.

Senator...

The general is the military.

They make totally idiotic proposals, which are excessively hardline.

And also too expensive.

Well, what they want us to get is the dismantlement of SS9, reduction of the SS11, and for that they're willing to pay nothing.

Now, that is impossible.

I'll go to you.

What about the idea that... And what is your feeling about what we really got to do, and I don't want to do this in the NFC, although I wouldn't mind sometimes letting these people gavel around again.

What I'm thinking of here is, you know, we talk about some of our real scholars.

There must be two or three that know something about foreign policy, are there, in this country?

Well, my point is, don't we really have to look at what the hell the Russians are up to?

That's what I'm more concerned about than why we're niggling around about salt.

Now, you want to remember, in 1972, it was important to have a meeting with the Russians on some sort of agreement.

In 1973, it was no less important.

And we're not going to pay one hell of a price.

I'm not even sure it's all that tough to deduce.

I don't know.

We can't deduce.

But basically, for us, it would be just as well.

There's nothing in it for us, I can say, particularly.

It was a nice diversionary action, people will think.

But my point is...

I just feel that we've got to, we wouldn't want to be here, Henry.

We don't want to be here for four years.

We can't.

And then, if we let this country leave, that's a goddamn hell.

That's just a year's time.

I mean, you've done what it's done.

So you see, let's think a little about that as we go on.

But if you want, what are the directions up to?

Most scholars are on the soft side.

Let me see what I can do.

Give me about three, which I would like to do.

We could go to Camp David, say, on some time on Saturday afternoon.

Just have a good bowl session.

I think we need to get, you know, extend our minds a little.

I think we're going to need to get to the tactics.

We could get aside, because I think this fellow presents a good point.

Tell us.

I think this fellow presents a good point.

I'm not sure when it's too soon.

I may not know who these men are.

Yeah.

If it could get to be useful, I think it would be very good, right?

You know, when you start to think, finally, this is what we're going to do, and people are going to get things.

You know, how everybody is.

I say everybody in the press is gambling around.

You know, but just by holding firm,

You know, it was the only thing to do.

But if we had ever gone forward with that confidence, as long as they were screwing around, you know, it would have been a disaster.

Those prisoners would still be in there next week.

We'd be negotiating.

We'd look pathetic.

And we would have allowed them to reach the agreement before signing one.

That's right.

And that we're not going to do.

Oh, and of course, that was, and that defines, we think we used all our precious, the things we did.

that worked in addition to the signing, I mean, to this conference, we didn't announce, which is always more effective.

That's what Kennedy never understood.

He always wanted to make a big blowout.

His words were always louder than his actions.

Our actions are louder than our words.

God tells men that they're all in the present, General.

I'll bet you that we've turned the field of yours.

Watched all of us in the rest.

And read papers.

Probably saying, thank God, they're interested in sticking to them again.

But you see, it's always been, and you see it in the press, how very hard it was.

Because it was the outcome, I think, what these bastards are.

And now, of course, they've built up this return for us.

Instead of making it a little silly, a little story again.

I want this thing here.

I think it's good that you're getting

I told you.

I don't think I wrote it.

Get the states something to do.

Always give them something to do.

And, you know, I think it may be a little bit underneath.

See?

But I don't think we should.

So he just lets us go in two weeks.

We don't worry.

We don't want to have a confrontation too soon.

I know.

Exactly.

Absolutely.

What I mean is, though, give us something to do.

Matter of fact, sometime we ought to get Cisco over here.

And you and I can have a talk with him.

How about that?

That would be very good.

Should we do that?

How about having him maybe tomorrow afternoon at some time?

And, uh, Steve?

Well, we can do it maybe tomorrow.

The reason that I think that is that we've got to get Cisco to know what the hell, where he's coming at, and he's got to be working on this.

Let's be sure he knows where the... And he doesn't know yet.

That's the other thing.

That's the other thing I would say.

I have plans to do that, yes.

We've got to get, Cisco knows what the hell, where he's coming at, where, and he's got to be working on this.

Let's be sure he knows where the, where the, and he doesn't know yet, that yellow, that I think, that's new approach, and I would take it easy.

Nixon, Ziegler & Kissinger on Middle East peace process

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Also recorded on March 1, 1973

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