settlement negotiated among the parties, and we
believe our input can be the definition of guarantees
for whatever settlement is arrived at, but at least
in the meantime we have managed to stop the process
of shooting.

Now, in addition to the Arab-Israeli
dispute there are two other problems in the Middle
East; one is the growing Soviet involvement, and
the establishment of Soviet military bases with
combat personnel that affect not only the Arab-
Israeli balance, but that, in the long term, affect
also the situation in the Indian Ocean, in the
Mediterranean in general, and in parts of the
Arab world that are not immediately affected by
the Arab-Israeli dispute, such as the states in
the Persian Gulf, so this is a matter of concern
to us.

And thirdly, it's the whole thrust of
the radicalism in the Arab world. Now, we are
trying to tie all these together and see whether
we can reduce the Arab-Israeli tensions, and
perhaps bring about a settlement to reduce the
possibility of an Arab-Israeli war, and also to

see whether in that process the Soviet military
presence -- at least the Soviet military combat
presence can be reduced.

Q Doctor, did you and the President have
good intelligence on Nasser's health prior to his
departure for the 6th Fleet?

DR. KISSINGER: No. We knew that Nasser was
not well. He had had one heart attack, and he was
always reported to be suffering from diabetes,
but as you know, with heart patients you can't
predict when the heart attack will take place,
so we knew he wasn't in -- we knew he had had
a heart problem, but there was no reason to
assume that he would die that week. We were
completely surprised by that.

Q Dr. Kissinger, there was a rumor during
the September crisis that Ambassador Dobrynin
was in bad grace with the President on the
ground that he had, on orders, deliberately
lied.

DR. KISSINGER: Well, anyone who bases his
policy on the assumption that Russian diplomats
always tell the truth deserves what he is getting,

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and this President is not known for his excessive gullibility vis-a-vis the Soviets. No, Dobrynin made, played the heart game. I can't say he actually looked -- he didn't break his back to tell us everything, but, you know, I would say if a British ambassador behaved as he did, he would indeed be in bad graces. If a Soviet ambassador behaves that way, you have to assume it's par for the course. He didn't do anything -- he wasn't in bad grace; he acted about as expected.

Q So we don't need to anticipate a change?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, we keep getting rumors that there may be a change, but if there is a change, it won't be because of our requesting it. He is very skillful, very able. He is a tough opponent, but we'd just as soon have somebody there that can translate the Kremlin's thinking; Dobrynin isn't a free agent, and we'd just as soon have somebody there who we think reports us correctly, and tells us accurately what the Kremlin thinks.

Q How do you read the course of -- the Soviet government now seems to be in a full

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re-Stalinization phase; is this going to be the
normal thing, and Khrushchev was just a departure
from it, or what? Is there any evolution going on?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, I think there is a
substantial Soviet -- the Soviet internal system
is very bureaucratic, and very mediocre. If you
read a book, for example, like the book
which describes what went on in the Soviet Union
in the '30's, and then you reflect on the fact
that the people who are now in power are the
survivors of that, who made their career while
thousands of desert acres were becoming fertile.

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Now, that is a -- this is not a group characterized by excessive trust, gentleness, and if anyone thinks we have no right to expect that they will treat us any more gently than they treat each other, suspiciousness is inherent in their nature. Every one of them have got to the top by double crossing every one of his potential competitors. After all, all of them owe their careers to Khrushchev; this didn't keep them from finishing him off any more than Khrushchev was restrained from finishing off Kaganovich and molotov, whose protégé he had been any more than any one of them were ganging up on Stalin when Khrushchev was in power.

The worrisome thing about the Soviet System now is that there is no one there strong enough, there is no one there strong enough, and it seems to us, to impose course and restraint to their policy. I was going to ask myself what happened last summer, for example, when we had the Middle East, and a number of other events -- the Middle East, Cuba, Berlin all happened at once. You can either say there is

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grand design to do us in, or you can say, as I am
beginning to believe, that you have there a group
of bureaucracies, each of them run by some feudal
lord who has made a nonaggression treaty with his
rival, and each of them operating below what he
considers the threshold of provocation with the
United States, but no one adding it all up, and
no one in a position to impose a pattern, as we
do in our system through the presidency, and the
presidential office.

If each of our bureaucracies were free
to do everything it wanted only restrained by
appeals to the top, you would first get a series
of nonaggression treaties among the bureaucracies,
and secondly you would get back some of the pattern,
and there are other indices that I cannot talk
to you about why I believe this may be true.

So what you have is a bureaucratic thing,
with a group of fearful leaders that may not sign
any long-range aggression, but it's also not
capable of, perhaps, making any long-range settlement,
and that at least until the Party Congress, and
maybe beyond, will be operating within a fairly

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narrow framework.

Q To what extent are we going to become involved in the Saigon elections?

DR. KISSINGER: Well, we genuinely -- we will take maybe two more questions.

Our genuine interest in Saigon, in the Saigon election is to have them as free as is possible, because we have to -- we are conscious of the fact that after we are out, for us the war will end; I mean, the painful part of the war will end when we are substantially withdrawn, and reduced to the role of advisors, but for them the war is not necessarily going to end, and therefore we have a stake in the government in Saigon that genuinely commands a reasonable support among the population.

Secondly, our political position, vis-a-vis the Communist restraint to the degree that every significant group in Vietnam gets a share at the -- gets a shot at the political process; and on the other hand, you have to be honest enough to admit that in no country in Southeast Asia is the notion of a free election in the American sense part of the

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tradition, so an election in that country means
something slightly different than it means to Americans.

And also in Vietnam there is not the
sort of political position where you have parties
with national organizations, but we have no intention
of becoming involved in the political process in
South Vietnam, directly or indirectly, and we will
abide by the outcome of the political process.

Whatever influence we will use will be
in the direction of making the elections as free
as possible.

Q I think about two years ago you said,
in San Clemente, about maybe South Vietnam some
day would be like India, maybe some Communist
provinces and so on.

Do you still feel that way, or have you
changed your mind?

DR. KISSINGER: No. That could still happen.
If the Communists had accepted our cease-fire
proposal, or they had accepted something like
it, that will probably happen, because that, in a
way, means that in the areas which they control,
they will at least have some significant influence.

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We don't say that that is what we want to happen, but we offered, in May, '69; we have repeated it ever since, that every political party, every political group, including the Communists, can participate in the political process. Thieu has offered to abide by the result; even if you say he doesn't mean it, at least he said it, which is more than the Communists have ever done, and we have offered international supervision of the process.

MR. SHUMWAY: Gentlemen, I know that we have kept you, and we appreciate your presence here.

We are, as I said, sorry that we were late, but the President has this habit of getting a hold of Dr. Kissinger when he is about ready to get on the plane.

DR. KISSINGER: Every time they shell the airfield in Phnom Penh.

MR. SHUMWAY: Thank you very much.

(Proceedings ended.)

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