This Copy For __________

BACKGROUND BRIEFING
(President's December 15th Vietnam Speech)

AT THE WHITE HOUSE

WITH DR. HENRY A. KISSINGER,
ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT
FOR NATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS

AT 5:02 P.M. EST

DECEMBER 15, 1969

MONDAY

MR. ZIEGLER: Ladies and gentlemen, could I have your attention, please?

You have the text of the President's remarks for
tonight. The text is embargoed for use until 6:00 p.m.
tonight. Dr. Kissinger will discuss the text with you.
You can attribute Dr. Kissinger's remarks to the White House
or to White House officials. Dr. Kissinger's remarks are
not for direct quotation. Dr. Kissinger.

DR. KISSINGER: I will take your questions.

Q On the bottom of page 2, the last paragraph
in connection with "that if infiltration and the level of
enemy activity increase while we are reducing our forces,
they also will be running a risk," are we to take this to
mean that nothing, including the increase in infiltration
and enemy activity will either reduce, reverse or impede
this withdrawal but that other steps will be taken?

DR. KISSINGER: No. We believe that on the basis
of what we now know we can proceed with this withdrawal,
and this takes into account present infiltration. Of
course, if there were a major enemy offensive, a substantial
increase in infiltration leading to a major offensive then
we would have to consider other steps.

Q If I may, that doesn't answer my question of
whether the withdrawal will continue or other steps include
a halt or a cessation of the withdrawal.

I am simply trying to establish whether this with-
d withdrawal is irreversible now.

DR. KISSINGER: We expect that this withdrawal will
continue as indicated.

Q Dr. Kissinger, would these other steps con-
ceivably include a resumption of the bombing of selected
targets in the North?

DR. KISSINGER: I don't want to go into the question
of what precise steps would be taken. We hope that this

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will remain a very hypothetical question. We hope that
our de-escalation and our reducing of forces is going to
be followed by the other side and we have taken into
account foreseeable enemy actions at our present level
of strength so we are talking about an extraordinary
effort by the other side, far beyond the framework that
now exists.

Q Dr. Kissinger, the President talks about a
reduction in the ceiling. As you know, we have occasionally
had difficulty with the ceilings and actual troop levels.

Could you go into that? What does it mean in terms
of actual levels?

DR. KISSINGER: We went through this discussion at
the last troop announcement, as some of you will remember.
The problem is that in order to meet the troop ceiling it
has been proved administratively useful to be somewhat below
the ceiling. This has varied anywhere from one-half percent
to two percent at various stages over the last year and a
half, the reason being that with some replacements always
going in and others going out, it could happen that in some
weeks there might be a slight fluctuation above the ceiling
and in order to avoid this we have kept the troop level
somewhat below.

Those of you who were present at the last back-
grounder when the last reduction was announced, I pointed
out that it was likely that the actual troop strength on
the day, December 15, would probably be one or two percent
below the 484,000.

In fact, it has proved to be 2-1/2 percent below
484,000. I don't want to tie ourselves to a particular
figure precisely. The reliable figure is the troop
ceiling. It has over the past two years always been below
that troop ceiling but I don't want to give a precise
figure of what that might be and it is for this reason that
we make all the announcements in terms of the troop ceiling.

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Q Can you refresh our memory on what the troop ceiling was when the President came to office?

DR. KISSINGER: Yes, 549,500, and the number of troops actually in the country was 542,500.

Q According to an extrapolation of what the President said in June about his desire to beat the Clifford timetable, it seems to me he would have to have 300,000 troops out by the end of this coming year, and he is, therefore, with only 115,000 out by April, running behind his own desired timetable. Is that correct?

DR. KISSINGER: You cannot make these projections on a month by month basis. You have to look at it in terms of an overall program. If you look at the increments of our withdrawals, each succeeding increment has been somewhat larger. But I don't want to mislead you and guarantee that this will always be the case. This depends on various circumstances. I think you would be making a mistake if you just drew a straight line from the present increments.

Finally, our major problem is not whether we will beat any hypothetical timetable. What we will be tested on is whether this policy works and if it works, then I think we will be forgiven if we do not meet any theoretical timetable, but I am not saying we will not meet it.

Q How do you reach the figure of 115,500 arithmetic?

DR. KISSINGER: 434,000 from 549,000

Q I add it up to 115,000 even.

DR. KISSINGER: The troop ceiling has been reduced by 115,500. Actually, the announced reductions of 115,000, to be absolutely accurate, we should have said 115,500.

Q The question is whether you say 50.5 to make it match the 115,500. What is the new troop ceiling?

DR. KISSINGER: The new troop ceiling is 434,000.

Q Should we say 50,500 to be accurate?

DR. KISSINGER: What was the troop ceiling last time? Was it 484,500? Then it is 50,500.

I want to check on these 500. At any rate, what are 500 among friends? (Laughter)

Q The announcement is 50,000?

DR. KISSINGER: The announcement is 50,000, and I don't think I should agree that you put 50,500 in my mouth. We will get the exact troop ceiling. We are not trying to play any games with those 500.

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Q With the previous announcements that adds up to 110,000 announced withdrawals, the other 510,000 come from the one or two percent variation?

DR. KISSINGER: That is right, the number of troops that have actually been reduced. The reason for all this confusion is that when we made the first withdrawal announcement, we did not do it in terms or troop ceilings.

In order to be absolutely fair, we withdraw 25,000 actual in the first number which brought us considerably below the troop ceiling. From then on we made all announcements in terms of troop ceiling.

In other words, if the first time we made a withdrawal we lowered the troop ceiling by more than the number of withdrawals -- because there were fewer troops than 549,500 -- the one thing about which there will be no doubt at all is that by April 15 there will be 110,000 fewer troops in the country than there were when the withdrawal started.

Q 110,000?

DR. KISSINGER: 25,000, 35,000 and 50,000. That is 110,000 and the troop ceiling will have been lowered. There were 5,000 fewer troops in the country than the troop ceiling when the withdrawal started. This accounts for the difference in the troop ceilings and actual withdrawals.

Q It will be 542,500 by April 15th?

DR. KISSINGER: No. The troop ceiling will be 434,000.

Q Those of us who deal in troops -- and we have all the time, we have been dealing with withdrawal of actual forces, we can begin with 542,000 and that has gone down 60,000 so far, 25,000 plus 35,000.

DR. KISSINGER: Right, and it will be down another 50,000.

Q So that is 110,000, 542,500 minus 110,000?

DR. KISSINGER: That is logical, yes. (Laughter.) That would make it 432,500. We are always very reluctant to give a precise figure of how much below, if anything, the troop ceiling we are going to be, but the record has indicated over the last two years that we have always been further below the troop ceiling than the figure you have just given. So I would say that on the basis of that record it is a reasonable thing.

Q How many of those are combat and will the bulk be withdrawn after the Tet holiday?

DR. KISSINGER: There will be a backgrounder at the Pentagon tomorrow, I think at 10:30, in which the composition of the withdrawals and some of the technical questions that you have raised with me will be answered.

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A substantial majority of the troops are likely
to be combat forces. It is difficult to draw an absolute
distinction because with each combat increment there also
goes some support elements but it will be weighted, as the
previous withdrawals, on the combat side.

In making the withdrawals we will probably take
into account the new infiltration and the possibilities
of an offensive, but the exact proportions of that the
Pentagon can give you.

Q Sir Robert Thompson was quoted
yesterday as having said in a BBC broadcast
that what he recommends calls for maintaining a military
establishment in Vietnam after a peaceful settlement.

Can you clarify for us what the President is saying
here? Is he endorsing Sir Robert Thompson's views?

DR. KISSINGER: No. He is reporting the analysis
of the situation that Sir Robert Thompson made after his
return from Vietnam.

Sir Robert Thompson's analysis was one of many
that we took into account in arriving at this decision.
This does not mean that every recommendation that Sir
Robert Thompson made is necessarily being accepted, nor
does it mean that the decision was made entirely on the
basis of Sir Robert Thompson's analysis.

All that this quotation attempts to do is to show
that we tried insofar as it is possible on the subject to
get as objective and wide a range of views as we could.

Q Can you speak statistically at all of the
infiltration rates at the present time, how they compare?

DR. KISSINGER: How it compares with what?

Q A year ago. The comparisons that the
President has set up, a year ago plus a few months ago.

DR. KISSINGER: The infiltration rate is consider-
ably larger than it has been, say, a few months ago by an
order of magnitude of five to 10 times as large as it was
a few months ago. It is not quite as large as it was a
year ago and it seems to be more sporadic.

At this time we cannot yet tell whether in view of
the rather low infiltration rate of the summer, whether
what is going on now is to replace losses or whether it is
an attempt to build up the forces beyond a level at which
they had more or less levelled off last spring.

If the infiltration rate that is now going on
were to be continued for a period of months then it would
be clear that the forces were being augmented rather than
being replaced.

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If this were the case, then, of course, we would
have to take another look at Hanoi's intention.

Q How do you explain this increased level and the reduced level of our casualties, is it because the South Vietnamese are bearing more of the brunt of the casualties?

DR. KISSINGER: Partly that, but largely the reason is the increased infiltration only started about a month ago and experience indicates that it takes anywhere from two to three months for these units to get into combat in their designated areas in South Vietnam, so it is too early for their effect to be felt.

Q Dr. Kissinger, the President's announcement is coupled with a new plea to Hanoi to join in serious negotiations.

Can you tell us what our diplomatic posture is going to be? The last reading we had was that we had put forth as reasonable proposals as any man could and we were in effect waiting for them to recognize this.

Are we going to have a new diplomatic initiative to persuade them or are we going to continue to stand on our proposals and hope they will finally see that they must negotiate?

DR. KISSINGER: It is our judgment that the missing ingredient at this moment in the negotiations is not our failure to put forward a new proposal. Hanoi has sold the beginning of negotiations two or three times by holding out vague prospects of what might happen if we took certain unilateral actions. Obviously, we realize that once a serious negotiation starts the final settlement will have to involve some give-and-take.

So we are in no sense saying the other side has to accept in toto the eight points put forth by the President on May 14. But the missing ingredient up to now has been any serious indication by the other side that it is willing to settle on the basis of a compromise.

As soon as this willingness is manifest, and as soon as they begin serious talks, they will find us, as the President says in the statement, flexible and forthcoming.

The reluctance that you describe applies only to a constant stream of unilateral proposals designed to get the other side even to start talking.

As you know, since June almost all of the talks have consisted of a vilification of our motives and a stereotype repetition of a speech that has for all practical purposes not varied.

Q Doctor, do you anticipate that all of the 50,000 troops will be withdrawn by April 15 or in advance of that which I assume is a target date?

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DR. KISSINGER: April 15 is a target date. We assume that they will be withdrawn by April 15. But how much before would be very difficult to say.

Again, the record of previous withdrawals indicates that they will be out before that day but I don't want to state that flatly. They will certainly be out by that date.

Q The President says, quoting Mr. Thompson, that a winning position has been achieved but we are not yet through and he describes this as cautiously optimistic and says it is in line with the other reports he has received from military and civilian leaders in Vietnam.

My question is: Does the President believe that a winning position has been achieved and we are not yet through and would you say he is cautiously optimistic?

DR. KISSINGER: He says he is cautiously optimistic. Yes, I would say that the President is cautiously optimistic. Now we are not relying on any one set of recommendations. We have created now here an interdepartmental group composed of the best people we can find to look at Vietnam statistics and to make an analysis of the situation on a constant basis and we are now in the process of analyzing these reports. We will obviously keep modifying our judgments as we look at the situation.

Now as far as a winning position is concerned, actually the reports we have received have been more optimistic than the reports we have transmitted because we have been very conscious of the danger of over-optimism and because we would rather deliver more than we promised.

Everybody who has lived in and in a way suffered through the Vietnam experience knows how many unexpected things can happen and how fragile many achievements in the past have proved to be.

How we would interpret the phrase "winning position" is not a military victory but a situation in which it is possible to negotiate a peace which gives the people of South Vietnam an opportunity to determine their own fate. This is our determination of a successful outcome.

Q Sir Robert Thompson equates a just peace with the maintenance of an independent and non-Communist South Vietnam and the President quotes that.

Does that mean that this is the President's view of a just peace for the South Vietnamese?

DR. KISSINGER: No, as I have indicated, the President has stated the one irreducible condition for us which is the opportunity for the people of South Vietnam to determine their own fate.

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Sir Robert Thompson is quoted not in order to define our war aims but in order to describe the judgment of an experienced observer who in the past has not been convinced that the strategy we were pursuing was correct about the local situation.

This was Sir Robert Thompson's assignment. It was not his assignment to define either our negotiating strategy or our national objectives.

Q Is he cautiously optimistic that he is achieving this?

DR. KISSINGER: Yes, I think that is correct. We are cautiously optimistic.

Q In the reference there about Mr. Habib, does that reflect the President's intention to not appoint a full head unless the Communist position changes at the peace talks?

DR. KISSINGER: No. The President has indicated that we would appoint a permanent head of the delegation at the appropriate moment. We are not making that appointment conditional on any specific thing that the other side does.

You have to remember that Mr. Habib has as much experience in Vietnamese affairs as any person around. He was political counsellor in Saigon for several years. He has been with Governor Harriman and Ambassador Lodge. I think everyone agrees who knows him and who knows the negotiations that he can conduct the present phase of the negotiations with very great distinction.

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Q Dr. Kissinger, have you received a report from Cyrus Eaton in Hanoi as to the feeling of the North Vietnamese leaders?

DR. KISSINGER: I have not heard from Cyrus Eaton. I have had a note from Cyrus Eaton from Tokyo, but I have not had a report of the content of the conversation, but I expect to get one when he comes back.

Let me say this about intermediaries. I think this war has been so complex and the issues are so involved and the lines of communications are so clear that I think it is highly unlikely that the war will be settled through intermediaries, however well intentioned, who appoint themselves, who have not been closely involved in the issue before, I would expect that if Hanoi wants to talk to us seriously, that they have many well tested channels at their disposal, and I would assume that they would use one of those.

Nevertheless, I will be very eager to learn from Mr. Eaton what his impressions are.

Q There have been articles recently suggesting that Vietnamization, particularly the constant improvement of the military, is going to result in a situation where the military will be in fuller control of the political processes than ever before.

Would you talk about that, and the prospect for land reform which the President praised so highly last June?

DR. KISSINGER: This Administration, to take your last question first, is very interested in the land reform program. It has urged it energetically and has been assured by President Thieu that it is one of his high priority objectives.

There has been some difficulty in getting his legislature to come along, but insofar as we can exercise any influence on matters there, no one in Saigon can have any doubt that this is an objective we favor and an interest in which has been demonstrated by our willingness to make available a fair amount of resources.

Now, will the process of Vietnamization strengthen the hand of the military? Well, it is probable that whatever government brings about the process of Vietnamization, and it is the present government, might well be strengthened by this process.

On the other hand, one of the end results of the process, if it succeeds, would be to put the South Vietnamese, one way or the other, in charge of their own destiny, and to let the political issue be resolved ultimately among the South Vietnamese.

So, to the degree that the process of Vietnamization is successful, it should provide an incentive to the other side to talk about a political solution before the contingency you mentioned has gone too far.

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Q The President said shortly after the death of Ho Chi Minh that it would take some months for the new leadership of North Vietnam to get itself settled down so that it could perhaps negotiate.

Do we view that process as still going on, or has the time run out when they should be able to come up with the negotiating position in Paris?

DR. KISSINGER: To be perfectly candid, as somebody who reads all the intelligence reports, I don't think that our knowledge of the internal deliberations of Hanoi is very detailed. We are, therefore, operating very largely on the basis of reasonable guesses and some surface impressions.

You must consider what I tell you in that context. There is no real inside information that would answer that question. I would think that in the next two months or so it ought to become apparent whether the North Vietnamese leadership is in a position now to negotiate with somewhat greater flexibility and whether is possible to chart a course in the sort of demonology that goes on where one analyzes straws in the wind and phrases dropped here and there, one can find support for a possible willingness for them to consider it, but I don't want to claim it.

I would like to say that the next few months ought to make it apparent and I recognize that I have said this before and it turned out that what became apparent was that they were not ready to talk.

Q Dr. Kissinger, the President says that the latest troop reductions were made in consultation with other nations which have combat troops in Vietnam.

Can you say, sir, now that the figure of 115,000 American troops has been reached, what stage these discussions with other nations have gone in determining the troop withdrawal program for countries like Australia and New Zealand and what the plans are of your Administration on that?

DR. KISSINGER: I think that the other countries should speak about whatever programs they have and we obviously are not making any efforts to encourage other countries one way or the other.

I believe that the various governments are likely to make statements, but I do know that we have been in close contact, especially with the Australian government, and that whatever the Australian government does will be done in close consultation and general agreement with us.

THE PRESS: Thank you.

END

(AT 5:29 P.M. EST.)

This Copy For

BACKGROUND BRIEFING

The following can be attributed to White House officials and is not to be directly quoted. Information contained in this BACKGROUND BRIEFING is for release 6:30 A.M., EST.
December 20, 1969

AT THE WHITE HOUSE

AT 2:50 P.M. EST.

DECEMBER 18, 1969

THURSDAY

MR. ZIEGLER: The ground rules for the backgrounder today are the same as they were for the backgrounder on domestic matters. You can attribute what Dr. Kissinger discusses with you today to White House officials, and you should not use direct quotations.

As was the case in the domestic backgrounder, the purpose of this is not to produce immediate spot news. It is to give you our impressions as to the year that has gone by in response to your questions primarily to Dr. Kissinger.

The material from this particular session is embargoed for use until 6:30 A.M. on Saturday.

Again, the objective of this, however, is hopefully to provide you with in depth information that you can use for year-end wrapups, if you have that project to do, and not to just generate a Saturday story.

Q This is a Saturday story?

MR. ZIEGLER: You can use it any time you want, whenever you are doing it. But to put some sort of embargo on it so you are all starting off at the same position, it will be 6:30 A.M. Saturday morning, or for Saturday P.M.'s.

Q This would apply to radio, too?

MR. ZIEGLER: Yes, sir, 6:30 A.M.

Dr. Kissinger, as you may know, prefers to conduct these sessions in response to questions. So we will go right to questions.

Q As a matter of curiosity, Ron, for guidance, do you have something coming down the track for Sunday? I am thinking 6:30 A.M. Saturday is kind of unusual.

MR. ZIEGLER: We did that because we wanted to focus dramatically on the fact that we are not doing this for spot news. We felt one of the way to do that was to embargo it for use until 6:30 Saturday.

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DR. KISSINGER: I am ready for your questions.

Q I thought you might have a frame, if I asked this question: Would you list briefly the accomplishments of the Administration this year and its major disappointments?

DR. KISSINGER: Let me first list the disappointments: Of course we haven't made more progress in ending the war, although we are on course. But we have always said there are two ways of ending the war. One is through essentially unilateral moves, on which we are now embarked, and the other one is through negotiations, which would be the rapid way of ending the war.

We are disappointed that there hasn't been more progress in the negotiations and we were perhaps more hopeful that there would be greater progress in the negotiations than there has in fact been, earlier this year.

In the accomplishments, let me take a few minutes on that. First, we have devised a new way of making decisions in the field of foreign policy, which I have explained to you on many occasions, and which takes a period of time to become effective; that is, we now have a reasonable opportunity to be sure that when a decision is made, we have looked at every respectable option, not only those generated within the bureaucracy, but those that exist outside, through the NSC system, and we have engaged in a systematic review of American foreign policy with this in mind.

We have done so, moreover, because we are convinced that, while Vietnam is, of course, the most anguishing problem we face, and the one that in the short term is going to determine the success or failure of this Administration, in the long term we are in a period in which American foreign policy has to be put on a new foundation.

For about 20 years after the end of the war, American foreign policy was conducted with the maxims and the inspiration that guided the Marshall Plan, that is, the notion of a predominant United States, as the only stable country, the richest country, the country without whose leadership and physical contribution nothing was possible, and which had to make all the difference for defense and progress every where in the world.

Now which ever Administration had come into office would have had to face the fact, I believe, that we have run out of that particular vision. Conditions have changed enormously. We are now in a world in which other parties are playing a greater role. They have regained some of their self-confidence. New nations have come into being. Communism is no longer monolithic and we, therefore, face the problem of helping to build international relations on a basis which may be less unilaterally American.

With this in mind, we have engaged in a rather systematic review of a whole range of things. What we have done in various fields, really, ought to be seen as part of this general pattern.

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You take the Nixon doctrine for Asia, the basic philosophy of which has really guided our actions elsewhere. This is based on the proposition, not that the United States withdraws from Asia, but that the defense and progress in Asia, as elsewhere, cannot be a primarily American policy, that the United States can participate where it can make a difference, but it cannot, over an historic period, be the American role to make all the plans, to design all the programs, to execute or implement all the decisions and undertake all the defense and be in the posture where both progress and defense of other areas seem more important to the United States than it is for the countries concerned.

Therefore, what President Nixon announced in Guam is the basic policy we have followed elsewhere. We have generally approached these problems in the NSC in two bites: That is, we would make a general -- the word isn't a bit philosophical -- decision first, of where is it we want to go, and then we would make a number of practical decisions on how to implement it.

For example, on Latin American policy, we made the general decision of where we wanted to go in July, and then in October, after Governor Rockefeller came back from his trip, and the Department of State and other agencies had made specific recommendations, we developed the implementing decisions.

What we have done in Latin America reflects essentially the same philosophy that has guided the policy towards Asia. That is to say, we have tried to develop a pattern that to the greatest degree possible elicits Latin American initiatives and the Latin American contribution, so that the programs that emerge there are joint programs, or programs in which the Latin American countries have played an important and perhaps even predominant role in formulating.

We have seen our role in eliciting their initiative and their contribution, and within the framework of what is a fact of life -- that huge sums are not available -- we have tried to go as far as it is possible to go, through executive and legislative action, to elicit this set of initiatives.

The policy towards Okinawa or towards Japan was set in effect in March. We decided in March that we were going to return Okinawa to Japan and we did so because we had to weigh the benefit in terms of physical security in maintaining our base in Okinawa against the intangible benefit of being able to establish a partnership with Japan on major areas of concern in the Pacific.

We decided that the temporary continuation of a certain amount of physical security was not our primary problem, that our primary problem was to enlist Japan's cooperation in the development of Asia and in the security interests of its immediate concern; and therefore, it seemed to us important for the sake of this long-term relationship to make the decisions which we did in March.

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We have always made it clear that we have no
permanent enemies and that we will judge other countries,
including Communist countries, and specifically countries
like Communist China, on the basis of their actions and not
on the basis of their domestic ideology.

And we hope we have started a process towards
Communist China, that over a period of years, will permit
a more calibrated relationship to develop, and one in which
such a large part of humanity will not be excluded from
the international community.

Now, let me go back to SALT because I think this is
a good example of both our approach and our philosophy.
There has been a lot of discussion, some discussion in the
press, that the White House in contrast to previous periods
is not as interested in negotiations as before, that we have
not given the push to arms control that previous White Houses
have given. I think it might perhaps be of some use, if I
explained our general approach, because I think it is
symptomatic of the Administration.

First, in the SALT talks, we are concerned not with
one weapons system, but a complex inter-relationship of weapons
systems, in which on both sides, the most basic elements
of security are involved, and which on our side, the most
fundamental issues of alliances and the conception by our
allies of their security is involved.

Secondly, there are many people who like to see this
as a morality play in which the good guys defeat the bad
guys and in which you drive desperately or, if not desperately,
in which you drive brutally, if necessary, towards one
position which you impose on the bad guys with White House
leverage, if necessary.

But if you look at the negotiations in this field
that have taken place over the years, you will find that
negotiations as relatively simple as the test ban, and as
the Non-Proliferation Treaty, took five and three years
respectively; that, if you look at what the classical
pattern has been, that we would enter with a position..

It never happened that the other side would come in
with a similar position and therefore, we were confronted
with having to spend half of our time negotiating with
ourselves, another quarter of our time negotiating with
our allies and the rest of our time in an entirely *tactical*
exercise with the Soviets. Therefore, what we attempted to
do is to be prepared for the contingency that the other side
might really be serious, and that if it was serious, it would
have to address a number of fundamental questions, which
would concern us as much as them, and, therefore, we did
something, which has not been done, I think -- I know -- in
the history of these arms control negotiations; that is, we
made a systematic survey of every weapons system that could
conceivably be the subject of negotiations, of our intelligence
capabilities with respect to that weapons system, of the
possibility of evasion with respect to that system, what counter
measures we would have to take, if there were evasion, what
risks we were running and how we could avoid these risks.

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And the purpose was to avoid the sterile, theological debate where one group of the bureaucracy would say, "You are jeopardizing American security without ever being able to define how", and the other group of the bureaucracy would be saying, "You must be able to run the risk for peace", without ever being able to tell you what the risk was.

As a result, first of all, many of the disagreements, most of the disagreements disappeared because when you define just what the evasion was that was possible, and what the risk was, it was possible to express it in a way in which most people agreed.

Secondly, we are in a position to put together almost any position, and we have in fact put together a whole variety of positions, depending on the scope of the agreement, that the other side might be prepared to undertake.

Thirdly, we were able to engage with the Soviets in the preliminary talks in Helsinki, in what I consider the most constructive talks on arms control of which I am familiar, either in or outside the government, and I had participated in almost all of the scientific exchanges outside the government that have taken place.

We were told before we went to Helsinki by many people that if we didn't go there with a position, the Soviets would lose confidence in us, or we were told if we didn't go there with a detailed position the Soviets would pre-empt the field with a spectacular of their own.

In fact, the curious thing seems to have happened that the Soviet preparations have taken about the same form as ours; that is, they have made a detailed analysis of the problems and I consider that one of the more hopeful signs, regardless of what may come out in the next phase of the talks.

We are now in a position to enter the next phase of the talks with some understanding of how the Soviets conceive the problem. And we are not flying blind and we are not just negotiating with ourselves when we put forward a position. Again, I repeat, I think we have done in terms of preparation, a more thorough, detailed, and thoughtful work than I remember having been done in the last ten years.

Another example of how this works is in the field of biological and chemical warfare, where rather than turn it into an obtuse exercise of whether one was for or against biological warfare, we went through an analysis of what could be accomplished in either of these forms.

And in short, what we have attempted to do is to be thoughtful and to look ahead and to look at matters in a comprehensive manner.

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The Defense budget now is no longer looked at
from a purely security point of view. We have this Defense
Policy Review Committee, which has been written about, which
takes into consideration political and arms controls
considerations and in the consideration of our basic defense
posture, we, for the first time consider the relationship
between the Defense spending and domestic needs.

And when it was presented to the President, he was
in a position to compare what domestic priorities had to
be given up, or where possible, at various levels of
Defense spending.

I don't want to be misleading. No procedure and
no attempt to be thoughtful guarantees that one is in fact
right, or indeed that one is in fact thoughtful. And three
years from now, we won't be judged by the process by which
we have made the decisions, or even where we attempted to
be thoughtful, but whether were we in fact thoughtful.

And I give that answer only in so much detail
because Peter raised it and this is the summing up of the
first year.

There are some other things that might be mentioned,
like the restoration of confidence in Western Europe, but
I think this is an area in which we will have to make further
progress, but why don't I stop now and make some more
questions.

Q Can you add the Middle East to that?

DR. KISSINGER: I will get to you, though.

Q A year ago when this Administration came in,
it was with the feeling that the Middle East was a powder
keg and that conceivably through approaching the Soviets,
one could find ways of defusing this. At the end of this
12-month period, where do we stand?

DR. KISSINGER: Did everyone hear the question? It
was where do we stand at the end of a year with respect to
the Middle East, which we had hoped was one of the areas
in which we can make progress.

In answer to the first question, I should have listed
the Middle East as one of the areas of disappointment. It is
true that we had hoped that we might be able to make greater
progress in the Middle East than has, in fact, been the
case.

And there are a number of reasons for it: One is
I must repeat that all our negotiations with the Soviet
Union, even about the Middle East, have been business-like and
precise. There has not been on the Soviet side, even with
respect to the Middle East, where they have been quite
unyielding, any of this tendentious propaganda which
characterized our previous exchanges.

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So that the tone of our conversations has been one which, at least does not foreclose future movement. But it is true that there hasn't been progress. There are a number of reasons for it.

One is that the local passions run so deep that they may not be amenable to outside pressures or outside advice, and that neither of the parties there may be willing to accept outside advice.

Secondly, in the abstract, one would say that a settlement in the Middle East comes about when each side will recommend to its friends what they consider a fair solution.

So far, the Soviet Union has not shown any great willingness to recommend to its friends in the Middle East a solution that deviates very much from what the friends have already unilaterally stated they consider as a fair solution. In other words, the Soviet Union has not been willing to pay any potential price for the sake of peace in the Middle East.

Therefore, we have not achieved through these political conversations as much as some of us had hoped might be possible.

On the other hand, we have been in contact and we have exchanged ideas. But I would have to list the Middle East among the areas of disappointment.

Q Dr. Kissinger, if I understood your remarks concerning our attitude toward having no permanent enemies, and you said we would judge each nation on the basis of its action, including Communist China, and it would have a more calibrated reaction to the Mainland Chinese. Does that not in fact constitute a change when compared with President Nixon's remarks at either his first or second news conference in which it seems to me -- I am going on recollection here -- that he said in effect there would be no change in our attitude toward Communist China.

Could you expand a little bit for us on that?

DR. KISSINGER: Frankly, I don't have the text of the press conference, and I seem to remember that he was speaking about the admission of Communist China to the United Nations, which we don't believe is the overwhelming problem since it involves a lot of other issues, including the international position of Formosa.

But I would say it is clearly a change in American policy of the post-war period, that we are prepared to have serious, concrete and we hope, constructive talks with Communist China. We make no attempt to overload the circuit at this moment, the problem is one of restoring a degree of confidence and the basis for a possible dialogue, rather than any very precise shopping list of ideas. There has, after all, been for over 20 years an absence of communication.

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But we have attempted, and I think to some extent succeeded, in beginning to establish some communication and at least to convey a different basic stance than has been characteristic in the past.

Q Doctor, how about Communist Cuba in that connection? Any openings foreseeable there?

DR. KISSINGER: There has not been any change during the past year with respect to Communist Cuba.

What we have attempted to do is to restore, is to establish the basis of a western hemisphere consensus first, and then to address the problem of Communist Cuba.

Q At the National Security Council, do you ever -- I am going back to Communist China -- talk philosophically about long-range Communist China? Do you ever relate -- let me press you on one point on Communist China. You have said that in the past, Dr. Kissinger, there is no problem of communication with Communist China. There is Warsaw and you yourself have said there is no problem.

Can you take us further back, or can you really elaborate on Communist China? Just what is the stumbling block?

DR. KISSINGER: The question is whether in the National Security Council we ever discuss philosophically the question of Communist China, the evolution of Communist China, and secondly, I have said in the past that there is no problem of communication with Communist China because of the Warsaw talks.

I don't quite remember what --

Q You said there are channels.

DR. KISSINGER: -- of the many remarks I have made over the years, which of the many remarks you may be referring to. And I think we have to distinguish two things: One is, of course, there are channels in the sense that there were the Warsaw talks, which haven't actually taken place this year, except for the one that took place last week, and then I suppose there are other channels that could be found. But the problem isn't only the existence of channels, but what moves in these channels.

In this respect, we have tried to convey to Communist China at this stage what our basic philosophy of international relations is, and how they fit into that basic philosophy of international relations.

This is much more important than to engage in a complicated negotiation because the outstanding issues, concrete negotiating issues between us and them, are relatively few, and, therefore, at this stage of the game, after 20 years of isolation, it seemed to us more important to convey our general attitude.

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If one looks ahead, if you say what is one's
basic notion of basic evolution: First of all, the Chinese
people are obviously a great people. They have the longest
unbroken record of government in one area of any of the
existing civilizations; and secondly, 800 million people
representing 25 percent of the human race, is a factor that
cannot be ignored. They will influence international affairs
whatever we intend to do and declaratory policy we adopt. They
are a reality. And their policy, for good or ill, will
determine the possibilities for peace and progress. And that
is irrespective of what we do.

Thirdly, a country of this size and weight is going
to affect all surrounding countries, again, irrespective of
what we do. Therefore, if it is true that the big problem
of the immediate post-World War II period was to avoid chaos,
and if it is true that the big problem of the next 20 years
is to build a more permanent peace, then it seems to us
impossible to build a peace, which we would define as something
other than just the avoidance of crisis, by simply ignoring
these 800 million people, whether they are aggressive or
relatively peaceful or something in-between is bound to
affect the whole structure of Asia and of many other parts.

Nor, do we over-estimate what we can do by
unilateral actions towards them.

They will make their decisions on the basis of their
conceptions of their needs, and of their ideology. But to
the degree that their actions can be influenced by ours,
we are prepared to engage in a dialogue with them.

Q Dr. Kissinger, could you discuss Africa in this
context of disappointment or accomplishment?

Q Could you repeat the question?

DR. KISSINGER: The question was where I would list
Africa in this catalogue of accomplishments or disappointments.
I would have to put it into neither category really, at
this stage. Obviously, we cannot do everything simultaneously.
We would have hoped that, for example, the Nigerian civil
war could be ended. And we have in this consideration of
major areas of the world, in fact, we had a consideration
of Africa this week in the National Security Council, which
would lead to the same set of actions -- I mean not to the
same set, but which will lead in due course to a concrete
set of actions.

So, I would have to say that by the time we meet
next year, we attach considerable importance to it, but it
did not seem as much in need of an immediate new departure
as some other areas.

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Q Dr. Kissinger, you have cited for us some things that you are satisfied with and some things that you are disappointed with. Some of the disappointments have been major ones, such as the Mid-East and Vietnam. Would you say on the whole that the disappointments outweigh the accomplishments or the other way around or how would you weight, in the other words, what has happened in the first year?

DR. KISSINGER: The question is how would I weight the accomplishments against the disappointments.

MR. ZIEGLER: You had better say the right thing, Henry.

DR. KISSINGER: If I say I weight the accomplishments more, you will accuse me of being a White House puff. If I say I weight the disappointments more, you will have a big headline. So, you have given me a hell of a question.

Let me say this: With respect to the two major disappointments that I mentioned, Vietnam and the Middle East, it is our judgment that we have not made further progress largely due to circumstances outside of our control, and that when I said that we have not made further progress on Vietnam, I think we have made considerable progress in Vietnam. We have not made considerable progress in the negotiations, as yet.

I would add to this the following point, however: When we talk about negotiations and the success and failure of negotiations, we tend to look at it from an Anglo-Saxon legalistic point of view; that is, we think negotiations are successful when there is a protracted period of give and take leading towards a settlement. This for better or worse is not the way the Vietnamese negotiate. The Vietnamese negotiate, or Hanoi negotiates, by adopting a posture of implacable ferocity and wanting to be paid -- they consider it a concession to enter that process of give and take.

Not that they don't look at that process for the place at which you make the concession. If you look at the negotiations that have taken place with the Vietnamese, over the years, you will see that every negotiation that succeeded has been preceded by a protracted stalemate that looked almost hopeless.

If you look at the site of the conference, the issue of the site of the conference, that was hopelessly deadlocked for six weeks and was settled in a week. The bombing halt seemed hopelessly deadlocked for six months and was settled in a week or two. The shape of the table seemed hopelessly deadlocked for three months and was settled in a matter of two or three days at the end of the Johnson Administration.

Now, I won't insult your intelligence by saying the fact there is a deadlock proves that they are going to settle. I am saying that the fact that there is a deadlock does not prove that they are not going to settle. And I would have to say that looking at the surrounding objective conditions, it seems to me, and it seems to us, that they have probably more reason to settle now than they had six months ago.

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So, from this point of view, while we have not made more progress in the negotiation itself, we hope to have laid the basis for making more progress in the next months. But I would also have to say that if we don't make progress in the negotiations, we now have a plan which will take longer, but which will enable us to end the war even without negotiations.

On the Middle East, I think I have explained what the reasons are that produced a deadlock. On the whole, I think that the accomplishments far outweigh the disappointments, and above all, I would like to believe, and we believe, that when the history of this Administration is written, the war in Vietnam will appear an incident that seemed overwhelmingly anguishing while it took place, but which does not in itself decide the other -- that is, the disaster could make impossible the constructive accomplishments that we are aiming for in the direction of constructing a peace, but I would say that the things that I have listed, and the basic objective of trying to bring about a peaceful world, should be the matters which over a period of years will become increasingly the overwhelming concern and the accomplishment by which this Administration will be judged.

Q Dr. Kissinger, two things: One, I wonder if you would illustrate with specific things that have occurred this year your more general remarks about the thrust of U.S. policy towards the Communist world, and second, I wonder if you could give us your observations on the structural things in foreign policy-making, what you have had to change and perhaps what, if anything, you came upon as things you hadn't thought about before as you actually got into the operations of government?

DR. KISSINGER: Maybe I will take the second part of the question first, the structural changes.

Q I asked you because so much has been written and talked over the years about the effects of the policy-making process.

DR. KISSINGER: Let me repeat again. No process can ever substitute for thought. And I don't want you to get the impression that we are claiming that the process alone is decisive.

Secondly, having seen three White Houses in operation, one would also have to say that there isn't a good or bad system in the abstract, although there are better or worse systems, but the system has to be geared to the personality of the President.

In our system, it is the President who decides and he, therefore, has to feel comfortable with the way his choices are presented to him or indeed whether he wants any choices.

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For example, I did not see the Eisenhower White House in operation, but I am told that President Eisenhower did not want choices presented to him. He wanted a consensus of the bureaucracy. Professors of public administration can explain that this is wrong, but the results were not cataclysmic. The structural changes that we had to make were, first, that there really wasn't an orderly procedure for making decisions.

The system was geared to getting the President's attention on a series of tactical choices, which came into the White House generated by the need to make some decision. It was therefore heavily oriented towards crisis matters, extremely dependent on whether somebody identified a problem and managed to push it into the White House and there was no regular method for forcing a consideration of issues that were not yet acute.

Secondly, the system was not at all geared to producing choices. And I must say that one of the big problems we had in our system was to convince the departments that when the President said he wanted choices, he meant it.

The tendency was to present the preferred choice and two phony choices, and to say that this was the range of options.

Thirdly, there has been an attempt -- and it is very understandable. Most senior officials are operators, and they are overwhelmed with their day-to-day problems. There is a natural reluctance for them to take on a problem that they don't have to take on since they already have more problems than they can usually manage in the course of a 24-hour day.

What our system has enabled us to do is to take the long-range and urgent problem by scheduling almost weekly NSC meetings, by forcing them into a framework of options and by separating the operational decisions from the basic -- I don't want to use the word "philosophical" because this gives it a pretentious meaning -- but from the general posture and attitude we want to take and forcing the senior people to address themselves to this. I think we have been able to introduce a sense of perspective to the policy-making that would then enable us to guide issues.

Usually, the President is confronted with, or historically the President has been confronted by the pressures of events, and by the necessities of making decisions in a limited time. By getting the basic policy determinations first in a rather specific way, the negotiations on a number of issues could then be guided in terms of them.

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Let me illustrate it with the SALT talks. We have not separated strategic doctrine from arms control; that is, the arms control people have sat on every body that produced strategic doctrine and the Joint Chiefs have sat on every body that produced SALT papers.

We went through the NSC process presenting, I forget, four or five basic approaches to the issues of strategic sufficiency on which we made a prior determination and those then guided both our weapons policy and our SALT preparations.

We did the same thing with respect to the general purpose forces, later in the year, and they, in turn, effected -- no specific negotiations, but they will effect our basic posture, for example, towards such issues as the European Security Conference.

In our relations with the Soviet Union, it seems to me that we have in the post-war period oscillated between periods of exaltation and periods of depression; that is, there have been periods in which the Soviets were thought to be irreconcilably hostile and it is absolutely senseless to talk to them. There were other periods in which good relations between our leaders and Soviet leaders tended to be equated with substantive progress. Both of these approaches were really dangerous because in the first period when we spoke of irreconcilable hostility, we tended to break off all contact and we tended to be obsessed with the tactics of managing the symptoms of a crisis rather than the crisis itself.

In the period of personal diplomacy, we actually made it harder for the Soviets to settle because the Soviets cannot settle, if they want to settle something, on the basis of good personal relations. They can settle it on the basis that their assessment of the situation makes it in their interest to come to an understanding. And we have never believed that we are doing the Soviets a service by saying that some Soviet leader is a particularly attractive fellow and some American President is particularly charming and he is going to charm that Soviet leader into making a settlement.

So, our approach to the Soviets, from the beginning, has been to convey to them the President has made clear -- when he has met, on the rare occasions he has met with the Soviet Ambassador, that, yes, we wanted to have a period of negotiations. We considered the issues seriously. We would prepare ourselves meticulously for any negotiations in which we engage. We would not engage in propaganda. We wouldn't use slogans which pretended we could break up Soviet relationships with their friends without the Soviets knowing it.

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On the other hand, we wanted the same attitude on their part; that when we entered SALT, we wanted to go in there knowing what we were doing and not simply engage in a great exercise of comparing overriding plans. This has been our attitude on the Berlin exploratory talks we have had, on SALT, on the Middle East. One has then to separate the accomplishments in this respect on two levels:

On the Middle East, for example, we have not settled the issue. But I think the exchanges we have had can contribute to what must be at least our minimum objective, which is to prevent tensions in this area from involving the two great powers.

At least we don't want the Middle East to produce a general war. And I think in this sense we have understood each other better.

On SALT it is too early to make claims for progress. This can still fail. Even if it fails, I think we have had a better understanding of what we are aiming at. And I don't think it is an entire accident that the Nixon Administration has been in office nearly one year without being exposed to any of the vilification in the Soviet press and to any of the personal attacks by the Soviet leaders that used to be standard in any previous Administration. I think the tone we have adopted, and the general framework, has contributed to that.

Q Dr. Kissinger, could I ask two related questions on Vietnam?

DR. KISSINGER: Please.

Q You said that there is more reason for them to settle now than there was six months ago, and I wonder if you could be specific in terms of what you believe some of those reasons may be. A related question: You refer, as has been the case on other occasions, to ending the war without negotiations, using the phrase, "Ending the war", when, if I understand the Vietnamization program, that it is not really ending the war, but turning it over to South Vietnam.

I wonder if you could help us a little bit in those two areas.

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DR. KISSINGER: The first question is what are the factors that I believe may contribute to increased willingness to, or possible willingness on the part of Hanoi, to negotiate; and the second question is whether Vietnamization will end the war, or why not just turn it over to the South Vietnamese?

Well, it is part of the general posture of the Administration that we like to do more than we say. And I would prefer not to make any sweeping claims on the negotiations.

What the President said at his press conference is obviously totally correct. There has been no progress in Paris. There is no progress to date. I have no secret information that indicates that there will be progress.

And, therefore, I want to make it absolutely clear that I am not predicting progress. And I would say that there are several factors that Hanoi is counting on: One is a division in the United States.

Until October, let us say, Hanoi, looking at the United States, could conclude that the pattern here very much followed the French pattern, that is more and more public discontent, more and more concessions, the greater the concessions the greater the public protest, creating a vicious cycle which could lead only to the collapse of the effort.

This has been reversed, While, of course, there are people who are dissatisfied with the war, and indeed we are dissatisfied with the war, the change in the American public mood and the degree of support that the President has managed to rally, is something that Hanoi must weigh. To what degree it will weigh it, it is hard to know and only they will know it.

The second factor that Hanoi cannot ignore is the continuation of the Sino-Soviet tension. Again, to what degree they consider it, I wouldn't care to predict. But it is something that cannot leave them unaffected.

Thirdly, while we have not made excessive claims for progress in South Vietnam, and while anyone who has seen the war over the years must be very cautious about claiming any permanent progress, there have simply been too many disinterested and even hostile observers visiting South Vietnam in the last few months, coming back with almost unanimous conclusions of significant progress in the country-side, one cannot ignore it.

I will be able to speak on that with greater confidence in another month or so when our own internal studies of this problem will be complete.

But if the reports are even partially correct -- and I can say that, already with some confidence -- then Hanoi may face for the first time the prospect that its political base in South Vietnam may erode the longer the war continues.

If that is true, and you notice I am making it

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conditional, then time is not necessarily on its side.

On the question of ending the war, of course, it
is impossible to make peace with an opponent who is assumed
to have an unquenchable thirst for conflict and there is
nothing we can do if one assumes that Hanoi is beyond any rational
calculation and is determined to fight for all eternity until
it either destroys itself or destroys its opponent.

So I would have to say that on its crudest level,
obviously,, the objective of Vietnamization is to reduce
the American participation increasingly and eventually
eliminate it.

On the next level, though, if Vietnamization
succeeds, and again one here is always talking about probabilities,
not certainties, then a point must be reached where this
fact will be obvious also to Hanoi and where then either the
war will fade away or some settlement will be made or what
is more likely, that sometime before then a settlement will be
made.

But I recognize that it is the curse of any
Vietnam discussion that the negative can always prove all
of the weaknesses of any course that one adopts.

Q Dr. Kissinger, in retrospect and in the broad
context of our relations with Communist countries and what we
would like them to be, how significant do you consider the
President's visit to Rumania was?

DR. KISSINGER: I think that the visit to Rumania
was significant. I think it was a symbolic demonstration
of our general philosophy that we are prepared to have
normal relations with countries on the basis of the foreign
policy they conduct towards us, not towards others necessarily.

We did not insist or suggest or even hint that
Rumania should loosen whatever relationship it may have
with the Soviet Union. We attempted to indicate that we
were prepared to have normal relationships with even Communist
countries, on the basis of their deeds.

Secondly, in dealing with the Communist world,
it is important to find methods of communication that are
believable and that can be put in a framework that others
understand.

So from this point of view, I believe it was
useful.

Thirdly, I think it was hard to go to Bucharest,
as many of you here did, without coming away with a feeling
that was not particularly aimed for when we came, because
it was not foreseeable, namely, that at least in Eastern
Europe, the ideal of what the United States stood for is
still something vital and important.

We have always interpreted the reception that was
received, not in terms of a personal tribute to an individual,

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but of an affirmation of certain fundamental human concerns.

Q Dr. Kissinger, there has been a great deal of concern, as you know, public concern, about the influence of the Pentagon and military thinking on the civilian decisions that are made in the White House, and the feeling on the part of some people that the military exerts an undue influence on those decisions.

Can you comment on that relationship during the past year?

DR. KISSINGER: Yes.

First, the military, as every other significant branch of the government, are given a full hearing. This is part of what the process is attempting to do.

Secondly, my experience with the military has been that once they have been given a full hearing, they are more likely to accept decisions they do not like than many other groups.

Certainly, they are not less likely to accept it.

Thirdly, I would think that the influence of the Pentagon on decisions in this Administration, on political decisions, has been less than it has been in previous Administrations for a number of reasons:

One, when the Pentagon is making a deliberate attempt to assert a foreign policy role, even on the leadership that recognizes the limitations of this foreign policy role, it is the size of its budget, of the competence of its staff, which gives it a great influence, whatever the intentions of the Secretary.

Under the leadership of Secretary Laird, the Pentagon has not attempted to assert a prerogative in wide areas of foreign policy. It has confined itself more to strictly military considerations than has been the case at least in the two previous Administrations. I say that without any reflection on the two previous Secretaries of Defense who happen to be personal friends of mine, but simply as a description of a structural problem.

Then the NSC system, as it has developed, makes it almost impossible for any one department to assert as a department a predominant influence, because end running is almost impossible. I would say it is almost impossible. It has not happened.

The decisions come to the President not in an impartial way, but with all the agency views fully presented. No decision is made without every interested party being in the room, and if you look, for example, at the decision made on biological and chemical warfare, and the kind of preparation that has been made, on SALT, the seabeds, and Okinawa, all of them have been done with the cooperation of

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the Defense Department, and certainly they don't reflect
a predominant military consideration.

Then, for the first time in the post-war period,
we have put the approach to the Defense budget into a wider
forum, and we have in the consideration of basic strategic
postures related them to the domestic needs.

All of this, I think, indicates that not
that the military don't play an important role, but that they do
not play a predominant role and that we are attempting
to put the military into the service of overall national
objectives, instead of having the national objectives
determined essentially on security grounds.

Q The almost one year of the Nixon Administration's
life has coincided with the period of the sharpest conflict
between the Soviet Union and Communist China. I was wondering
to what extent you felt that these softer tones and character
of Soviet conduct is related to their needs to accommodate
this fact, as opposed to a response perhaps to your own
conduct towards them.

DR. KISSINGER: It is never easy to disentangle
what is produced by conditions that you did not create and
what is produced by your own policy.

All I can say is that I remember that during the
Berlin crisis in 1961 and 1962, it used to be argued that
Soviet intransigence was caused by their conflict with
Communist China, that they wanted to clear their rear up
so that they would be ready for the eventual conflict with
Communist China.

I am not saying that was correct. All I am
saying is that whatever policy the Soviet Union has adopted
to the west can be made to fit some interpretation of Sino-
Soviet relationships.

I would have to guess that it is probably a combination
of both factors -- the fact that the Sino-Soviet conflict
is, of course, very much on the minds of Soviet leaders.
At the same time, if they believed we were either
irreconcilably hostile or so impervious to the needs of
the situation that it was impossible to talk to us, then
they would have to take that into account all the more so
as their conflict with China is not one that they cannot
defer for any number of years or defer forever.

So my judgment would be that our policy has
contributed substantially. I don't think it is the only
factor that produces the Soviet policy.

Q Have the massacres ---

DR. KISSINGER: I think I have had a question from
you already.

Q Doctor, has agreement been reached on a date
and place for the strategic arms talks?

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DR. KISSINGER: The question is has agreement been reached on the date and place of the strategic arms talks?

I do not believe that an agreement has yet been reached. The issue of the place is not an issue of principle with us, but an issue of convenience and will not raise an insurmountable problem. On the issue of the day our general attitude may be somewhat earlier than that of the other side.

But again, I wouldn't draw any profound conclusions from it. I find it hard to believe that the preliminary talks that have started on this level should not be followed by serious substantive talks.

Q What is our thinking about the time for the start of the talks?

DR. KISSINGER: We are ready to proceed after a relatively short interruption. I don't want to characterize the on-going discussions. We are not the obstacle to an earlier resumption, but I don't want to accuse the Soviet Union of anything in this respect, because serious people may want to evaluate the implications of what was discussed and may be confronted with the decision-making process that has its own necessities. And I don't ascribe any profound significance to that.

Q Dr. Kissinger, when the Administration first came into office there was a good deal of speculation, correct or otherwise, about the possibility of an early Presidential trip to the Soviet Union. What is the thinking behind that scheme, if it every really was correct, and what would be the reasons for going to the Soviet Union, given your line about the de-emphasis on personal diplomacy?

DR. KISSINGER: Let me make two comments about personal diplomacy. Personality plays a role in foreign policy, but personal diplomacy has to be seen in its proper context. I believe, for example, that the fact that the President is personally acquainted with most of the world leaders that we have met, and the fact that they have known him for a long period of time, has made it much easier, and in many cases has made it possible, to bring about the transition from that period of American tutelage to a period of something much closer to equality.

Those of you who have been familiar with various kinds of alliance discussion in the '50's and '60's will recognize that many aspects of the Nixon doctrine were not very easy for many of the leaders of other countries that were used to other forms of relationship, and the fact that the President has known them for a long time, and his personal acquaintance has certainly helped. So I don't want to underrate the importance of personal relationships.

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But in the relationship with the Soviet Union, we face this problem: First of all, empirically, if you look at the summit meetings that have occurred, none have really permanently improved the situation, and almost all of them have been followed by a deterioration rather than by an improvement in the relations.

The reason may be that if you go to a summit meeting that is not carefully prepared, if you make the exercise in the personal conduct the only purpose of the meeting, then you are driven towards issues that are not really worthy of Presidential concern, and while the deeper issues continue, and when Heads of State confront each other, an impasse has a much deeper meaning than otherwise.

Therefore, our approach to summit meetings is this: We are prepared to have a summit meeting, and we hope that sometime during the Administration it will be possible to have a summit meeting. But we would like to have the summit meeting register considerable progress, and that it would move the last step of the way rather than use the summit meeting for its own sake.

Therefore, any time when enormous progress has been made, or when considerable progress has been made, or when we can see progress in sight, or when some issue that is soluble within the framework of a summit meeting presents itself, we will be prepared to have it. Because when we have a summit meeting, we would like to build something permanent. That, therefore, I think, reflects what can be fairly described as our general approach.

We don't want spectacular for their own sake. We don't want to engage in public relation efforts, and we don't want to raise hopes that then cannot be fulfilled.

So I hope that when there is a summit meeting in our Administration, we can all feel that we have made considerable progress before it and will make even more progress.

Q Do you list as one of your disappointments the fact that our disengagement from the war plan has not come across with the peace group more, and along that same line, would it not have been wise for the President to have at least seen the peaceful peace leaders here when they were here as they requested?

DR. KISSINGER: Gentlemen, you can't ask Presidential Assistants to second-guess what the President may or may not have done.

We have taken the peace groups very seriously. A number of us have been in close contact with the leaders of the peace movement, and not always with a great deal of publicity, precisely because some of us have felt that serious people should be able to talk to us without having to worry about being used for whatever benefit the meeting could be for us.

So I can say that with the strong encouragement of the President, a number of senior White House Assistants have been in frequent contact with a number of peace groups.

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I, for one, have never commented on any meeting with peace groups. Peace groups have come to see me and have commented after they had seen me about my inadequacies, but I have never made any comment one way or the other about my impressions.

Secondly, in a way, of course, it is a disappointment. It is not one of our fundamental ones. Of course we understand their frustrations, and their concerns. They won't be satisfied until the war is ended.

I would like to think that a year or so from now, whenever the war is ended -- don't hold me to this time-frame -- they will feel that we have done well by them. The final judgment of what we may have done for the peace groups will have to be made when our policy has succeeded.

Many of the peace groups want to end the war. They don't really know how. They are trying to instruct us in something in which we don't need instruction. We want to end the war.

Q Dr. Kissinger, you spoke earlier of the Administration's expectations that negotiations would succeed. In the Spring of this year, wasn't it your expectation that the negotiations would have wrapped it up by the end of 1969?

DR. KISSINGER: No. In the Spring of this year, it was my hope that some progress could be made during the summer. In this complicated demonology in which one analyzes new answers or statements, there was some marginal reason to believe that some progress might be possible during this year.

Then for a variety of reasons, one of which probably was the illness and death of Ho Chi Minh, some of these hopes were frustrated.

For example, after the President made his May 14 speech, Le DUC THO, the Hanoi politburo representative in Paris, made a public statement in which he said that the President's eight-point plan and their ten-point plan had many things in common. This is something they had never said before and have never said since.

Then about a week later, this line was dropped and they reversed themselves. We hadn't done anything in the interval to affect this.

Many people speculated that perhaps this coincided with the terminal illness of Ho. I don't know whether this is the explanation or whether there is some other explanation.

So there were periods in which one was more optimistic on negotiations. There were periods when it seemed less possible, and at this moment, I would have to say candidly that there was no significant progress in the negotiations.

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Q Dr. Kissinger, the President has said he doesn't think the enemy in Vietnam is capable of a major and sustained offensive. Could you tell us what you think they are capable of at this point, and do you see them building now toward a winter offensive, a couple of months away?

DR. KISSINGER: At this point they are certainly capable of the sort of thing that occurred a few times during the summer, a high point, in which, through shelling and more or less coordinated attacks, they can bring up American casualties -- not to the levels of the Tet offensive, but for a week or two, to levels considerably above what they are now.

They are probably not, with their present forces, capable of achieving any permanent gain. That is, they are unlikely to take a provincial capital and hold it and declare it as their capital, or to do the sort of thing that was done during the Tet offensive or even that was done during last year, the sustained series of attacks against our positions over a seven-week period. This, I consider, improbable, with their present forces.

But even with their present forces, some reverses are inevitable. It isn't possible to have such a conflict without a front line in which there are no reverses.

The next question is, are they building towards an offensive? This is what we will know in the next six to eight weeks. They started infiltration again at the end of October -- incidentally, about ten days before the President's speech -- on a scale considerably above -- well, to say considerably above what had been taking place doesn't mean much, because for awhile there was next to no infiltration for a few weeks, but at a rate which is comparable to what had gone on in previous years.

This went down a little bit again, and then started up again. What we are trying to determine is this: If it does not go much further than it has gone, between the end of October and now, it would be consistent with a decision to replace losses, and that, in turn, would be consistent with a decision to negotiate, since, if they don't replace their losses, their situation will disintegrate.

If it continues at the average rate of the last seven weeks for the next seven weeks, then they are clearly augmenting their forces. If they augment their forces considerably, then this probably means that they will launch some attacks. What sort of attacks, whether this is the beginning of a sustained offensive, or a one-shot, dramatic operation, this is hard to say. They have never followed the same pattern in two successive years.

I must say at this point, it is too early to say that they are building up for an offensive. Our evidence is consistent, really, with both interpretations. Therefore, we are watching it carefully.

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Q You make a convincing argument for the options and the alternatives being laid out. In that case, could you give us your option or alternative in case they do launch major offensives sometime in the next six months? What happens to our Vietnamization program then?

DR. KISSINGER: First of all, the one thing I will not do in this job is to provide a check list of what I recommend or even of the choices that I outline. On this level, I will have to be reasonably anonymous.

Vietnamization really has two meanings. One is the degree of the control of the Vietnamese government in the provinces. On this there is almost general agreement that this has been extended considerably and quite effectively.

The second one is the improvement in the effectiveness of the Vietnamese forces. There we have many reports that we have no reason to doubt that this is taking place, but we don't really know, because it hasn't been fully tested yet.

One of the things that may be tested by this offensive is whether Vietnamization has really put these Vietnamese forces in a position where they can resist substantial attacks.

What we will do in various circumstances, I think, I wouldn't want to speculate, except to refer you to the President's speeches.

Q Dr. Kissinger, would you address yourself to the question of public patience and acceptance of the policies now, in terms of how permanent or how fragile it might be, how lasting you consider it is now, in terms of how much concern there might be that it might suddenly, quickly evaporate, should events lead that way?

DR. KISSINGER: First of all, let me make it clear that I am no expert on the public mood. I hope I can contribute to a consideration of what I believe to be the right policy. But I can't guarantee that that will inevitably find public acceptance.

The big intangible is not only whether there will be public acceptance of the war, but also whether there is public acceptance of the peace. Anybody can end the war. Our problem is to keep the society together. We are not trying to create more schisms. We are trying to heal the schisms through the process of how we are trying to end the war.

We believe that as long as we are candid with the American people and tell them all the news, that we will have enough support to do what we believe must be done. If not, then we will see.

THE PRESS: Thank you.

END

(AT 4:15 P.M. EST.)