Israelis grant Sadat wedding gesture

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33446, 30 January 1974, Page 25

Israelis grant Sadat wedding gesture

(N ZP. A.-Reuter—Copyright) NEW YORK, January 28. President Sadat of Egypt wanted the blocked road to Suez City opened to relieve

surrounded Egyptian soldiers on his daughter's wedding day, so he told the I nited States Secretary of State (Dr Henry Kissinger) of his wish. Dr Kissinger told the Israelis and they granted it. according to ’’Time” magazine.

In another instance, the Israelis wanted to send a party, accompanied by rabbis, to remove bodies of some of their dead soldiers on Egyptian soil. “That request might have been laughed at earlier, but it found immediate acceptance and was approved,” Dr Kissinger said. “Time” magazine reported this in an interview with Dr Kissinger by its Washington correspondent, Hugh Sidey, to whom the Secretary re-

counted some vignettes of his recent Middle East peace making. Sidey said that the me-dium-sized sft Bin “pear shaped” Kissinger still finds it hard to look physically impressive, especially when “his double chin gets in the way.”

But he had a way of joking with the Arab leaders, who asked him about his girl friends, including the movie actress, Jill St. John. At one point during his Middle East negotiations, Dr Kissinger joked that he would give the girls’ telephone numbers in return for

lifting of the Arab oil embargo, then reneged: “You can put the embargo back on any time you want, but if I give you those telephone numbers ! can’t get them back,” he is reported to have said. I Dr Kissinger also made it a point, during his hectic

, back-and-forth negotiations, to keep the Russians informed. Sidey said that he sent five personal letters to the Soviet Prime Minister Mr Kosygin in Moscow to keep him up to date. Dr Kissinger, a former university professor, has revised some of his ideas about diplomacy and how the world works politically. Sidey quoted him as saypng: “When you see this in practice you see the differences that the personalities make. There would have Ibeen no Suez front settlement without Sadat and Golda Meir and the Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Dayan.”