Ford backs Kissinger

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33741, 14 January 1975, Page 13

Ford backs Kissinger

right) NEW YORK, January 13.

President Ford has expressed support for the Secretary of State (Dr Henry Kissinger) on the possibility that force might be used in a potential future oil crisis, “Time” magazine reports.

The magazine quoted Mr Ford as saying in an interview with the magazine: “I stand by the view that Henry Kissinger expressed . . . Now, the word strangulation is the key word. If you read his answer to a very hypothetical question, he didn’t say that force would be used to bring a price change. “His language said he wouldn’t rule force out if the Free World or the industrialised world would be strangled. I would reaffirm my support of that position as he answered that hypothetical question.”

Asked to define “strangulation,” he was quoted as replying: “Strangulation, if you translate it into the terms of a human being, means that you are just about on your On the Middle East, Mr Ford was quoted as saying the United States wants to see more progress in the step-by-step peace negotiations conducted , by Dr Kissinger before the Geneva Middle East peace conference is reconvened. The magazine quoted Mr Ford as saying that the prospects for war are “very, very serious. They get more serious every day that we don’t get some action for further progress in the settlement of some of those disputes.” Asked whether the United States would undertake to guarantee Israel’s security, “Time” said that he replied: “We have given everything except that. We have often made commitments that we consider Israel a necessary State in the Middle East, both as to integrity of territory and its existence. I wouldn’t

rule out (a guarantee) underi some circumstances, but ■ there has to be, in my judgment, some real progress ! there before that step would! be taken.”