A-4—THE PENINSULA TIMES TRIBUNE, Monday, November 17, 1980

NOV 17 1980

# Kissinger meeting not official

PARIS (UPI) — Henry Kissinger says he has no permanent job with the administration of President-elect Ronald Reagan, but he touched off a furor by flying to Paris for a private meeting with South Africa's foreign minister.

The former U.S. Secretary of State arrived from Lisbon to find a small army of journalists greeting his return to the diplomatic front in Paris, where in the 1970s he negotiated to end the Vietnam war.

"I am not here as a representative of Governor Reagan and not in any official capacity," Kissinger told reporters, brushing aside suggestions his visit was in connection with Foreign Minister Roelof Botha's talks with European leaders on independence for Namibia,

now under South African tutelage.

Kissinger said Botha heard he was going to Paris "to see an old English friend and he suggested we meet. We're old friends."

But after a two-hour meeting in Botha's hotel suite, Kissinger acknowledged that "he told me his views on the southern African situation. I will tell the State Department what the minister told me. I perhaps will have the occasion to mention it to Governor Reagan."

Kissinger added, "I could give advice to the President-elect if he asks me for it, but he and I will not get involved" in the negotiations for Namibian independence.

Botha's request for a meeting with Kissinger came after the United Nations called for an international

conference to try to end the guerrilla war in Namibia and ensure its independence under SWAPO, a guerrilla movement fighting the government backed by South Africa.

Evading questions about his role in the Reagan administration, Kissinger told reporters, "I am on a committee supposed to study foreign policy in the interim for Governor Reagan. It's not to be taken for granted as to what will happen later."

Kissinger said he was not optimistic about the outcome of the European Security and Cooperation Conference in Madrid and said it was "absurd" that it was being held "less than a year after Afghanistan and during talk of intervention (of the Soviets in Poland)."

THE PENINSULA TIMES TRIBUNE, Monday, November 17, 1980—A-3

# Iraq claims gunboats sunk, Iran battles to hold key city

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — Iraqi forces attacking Susangerd sank 12 Iranian gunboats in the Karkheh River on the outskirts of the city, the Baghdad command said today. Iran said it sent in tanks and troop reinforcements behind rocket-firing helicopter gunships in what appeared to be a last-ditch effort to hold the southwestern highway city against the invaders.

Kuwait, meanwhile, lodged a formal protest with Iran over a second Iranian rocket attack on a Kuwaiti border post, an incident that renewed fears the two-month-old Persian Gulf war could spread to neighboring oil-rich nations.

diers in house-to-house fighting there.

Today's Iraqi communique said in addition to sinking the gunboats, its forces destroyed 10 rocket-launching bases, eight Iranian anti-tank missile launchers and 22 military vehicles in Susangerd, and that "the enemy lost a huge number of soldiers killed in the operations Sunday night and early Monday."

The Tehran broadcast did not say where the reinforcements were sent from. A probable source is the city of Ahwaz, which has the largest army garrison in southwestern Iran and is 30 miles to the north.

A Baghdad communique said Iraqi forces in the drive to capture

ital of Iran's oil-rich Khuzistan Province that the Iraqis are trying to squeeze in a pincers movement.

A communique from the Iranian general staff said Iranian fighter planes bombed the Iraq's southern naval base of Um Qasr again and sank two enemy warships.

In Kuwait, meanwhile, the Cabinet held an emergency session to compose a protest of the Sunday attack and decided to summon the ambassadors of Arab, Islamic, and non-aligned nations to a briefing, according to State Minister for Cabinet Affairs Abdul Aziz Hussein.

Hussein told reporters that

Kissinger tells Realtor convention
international crises may multiply
*** NOV 15 1980

ANAHEIM (AP) — Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said this week that U.S. foreign policy during Ronald Reagan's administration will be "the only road to peace."

However, Kissinger told a convention of the 5,000-member National Association of Realtors at the Disneyland Hotel that he expects international crises to multiply.

"The next five years is going to be a very difficult period regardless of the election (last week)," he said.

Oakley Hunter, chairman of the Federal National Mortgage Association, had presented conventioneers with a similarly dim outlook earlier but went on to outline two new mortgage programs that "design new financing alternatives for an inflation-ridden world."

Hunter said high interest rates and double-digit inflation are not likely to ease in 1981. But he said housing will continue to be the best investment for an average American family in the 1980s.

Associated Press

Henry Kissinger

"FNMA's resale finance program and its new home seller loan program will help homebuyers obtain affordable loans while, at the same

time, help FNMA to maintain its liquidity in the mortgage market," Hunter said.

Kissinger, who served as secretary of state under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, said he does not expect to be appointed secretary of state by Reagan.

Hunter said earlier that under FNMA's resale finance program, effective Monday, purchasers of homes on which FNMA owns the mortgage will be eligible for a new FNMA conventional mortgage.

That new loan will reflect the home's current market value and will beat a lower rate than is generally available.

The FNMA now owns about 1.9 million home mortgages, he said, adding that every one will be eligible for the resale finance program.

He said FNMA's new home seller loan program would make the services of FNMA-approved lenders available to home buyers and sellers. He said it also would permit the home seller to cash in on his mortgage by selling it to the lender who would in turn sell it to FNMA.

The Foster City City Council has approved plans by **Dividend Development Corp.** of Santa

Bulletin Board

Clara for development the last large plot of residential land in that community. The 141-acre plot eventually will be covered by more than 330 single-family homes, 232 townhomes and 675 condominiums. The agreement reached includes payment of approximately $2.8 million by Dividend to the city and the granting of 6,700 square feet of land for a fire station. Dividend must pay for all of the improvements, including street paving. Dividend, a subsidiary of Dividend Industries Inc., builds throughout Northern California.

A seminar on income **Tax Update for Real Estate Brokers and Agents** will be held Nov. 20 at the Santa Clara Howard Johnson's, 5405 Stevens Creek Blvd. The program will last from 8:30 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. The course, now in its fifth year, is sponsored by Tax Seminar Associates of Sunnyvale and is approved for seven hours of continuing education credit.

**National Association of Home Build-**

ers' President Merrill Butler will discuss "1981 — Will It Be Any Better?" with Bay Area builders Nov. 20 at the LeBaron Hotel, San Jose, at 7:30 p.m. For more information call the builders' association at (415) 828-9230.

**Van Vleck Realtors** in San Jose has opened a Relocation Center to help orient newcomers to the Peninsula before they buy a home. The center employs trained consultants to counsel prospective homebuyers who might be moving to the area to a new job.

**The Atlantic Cos.** based in New York has introduced an easy-to-read homeowner's insurance policy in California. One of the first of its kind in the state, the policy will be available through independent insurance agents and brokers.

John Pinto, president of **Executive Realty Services**, and Ellen Pinto, vice president, will be interviewed on KMPX (98.9 FM) on Nov. 23. The program, "Talk of the Town," will be broadcast at 7:45 a.m. and 11:00 a.m.

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On-Line Business Systems, Inc.

Kissinger says U.S. 'through apologizing'

ANAHEIM (UPI) — Henry Kissinger says the election of Ronald Reagan is a signal to the world that the United States will no longer stand for being kicked around.

The former secretary of state said Tuesday the election "is a message to the world that America is through apologizing."

"People still think they can kick us around and then demand our support as a reward," Kissinger said, and that will no longer be the case.

Kissinger, who advised Reagan during the campaign and has been mentioned as having a future role in the new administration, said he thinks U.S. foreign policy will soon return to what it was when he ran the State Department under Presidents Nixon and Ford.

Kissinger said he expects international crises to multiply and that the United States "has no choice but to increase military spending."

But, he said, "The United States should not be the bully of the world."

Harper's

AMONG HISTORY
WITH HENRY A. KISSINGER

### Campaign biography

by William Shawcross

WHITE HOUSE YEARS is billed by its publishers as "the history of our times." It is nothing of the sort. It is a campaign document hastily produced in order to enhance Henry Kissinger's chances of serving again as secretary of state—for almost any president. It should be treated with at least as much caution as any other manifesto produced by an American politician in these highly political months.

When the book was in galleys, on the point of going to press in summer 1979, John Connally was widely touted as a leading Republican presidential candidate. At the last minute Kissinger deleted from the galleys some mild criticisms of Connally ("He needed his achievements to be constantly reconfirmed by tests of strength" and "It was not enough for him to win; his opponents had to be seen to lose"). What was left was an unblushing hagiography: "Highly intelligent, superbly endowed physically, he looked and acted as if he were born to lead..." and so on. (p. 951)

Kissinger worked hard on Connally's behalf. When it became clear that Republican primary voters had a different idea of Connally's true worth than Kissinger himself, he switched to other rubber-chicken circuits—those of Howard Baker and George Bush. They too faltered, and last March it was above all Henry Kissinger who persuaded Gerald Ford to make a last-minute attempt to thwart Ronald Reagan's ambitions. With Kissinger standing by his side, Ford announced that Reagan was "unelectable," that he would test the waters himself, and that if he were elected president, Henry Kissinger would be his secretary of state.

Ford quickly realized that his chances of

success were minimal and so announced his withdrawal from the race he had barely entered. At once Henry Kissinger was on the telephone to Ronald Reagan's staff, assuring them that he would never do anything to hurt the governor. They were not particularly amused. But at the Republican Convention, Kissinger tried again. It was he especially who pushed Ford to ask for the Constitution to be amended to give more power to Vice-President Ford and his people—Kissinger prominent among them. When the effort collapsed, one of Reagan's men commented of Kissinger's scheming: "I finally have some sympathy for Le Duc Tho." Even now, however, there is still some talk of a President Reagan offering Kissinger a prominent appointment. That is clearly now Kissinger's hope. He does not deserve to be secretary of state again. Nor indeed to hold any other position of public responsibility. Even his own memoirs show that. That is why they require further examination at this time.

### A false sense of security

THIS IS QUITE a task, because White House Years is not designed to be read. At 1,521 pages and $22.50, it is out of the reach of most laymen. Indeed Kissinger's history of the first four years of the Nixon administration is longer than H. G. Wells's history of the world. Its volume is intended much more to awe than to enlighten. It is designed also to lull its readers into a false sense of security, to convince them that Kissinger is telling all that there is to be told. In this regard it has been successful. Even serious critics of the book like Bart-

William Shawcross is the author of Sidehow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia (Simon and Schuster).

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William
Shawcross

THROUGH
HISTORY
WITH
HENRY A.
KISSINGER

bara Tuchman, who reviewed it, with evident distaste, for the *New York Times*, said it contained “virtually every message, meeting, journey, negotiation and conversation in the fifty months it covers.” Townsend Hoopes, writing in the *Washington Post*, said, “It is not only overlong but paralyzingly detailed, a setting down of nearly every meeting, mission, conversation, cable, and memcon in which Kissinger was involved.”

This is not so. Kissinger's book is exhausting—in an emotional and moral sense—but it is in no way exhaustive. On the contrary, it is an extremely limited as well as partial account. All memoirs are self-serving—that is their purpose—but Kissinger's are an apologia without apologies, beyond cosmetic and self-interested acknowledgments of his own vanity, temper, and unkindness (to William Rogers, for example).

The book was published with great ballyhoo last fall, with newspapers and television stations falling over themselves for the privilege of serial rights and interviews. Reviewers were under tremendous pressure to produce their notices quickly, and thus many were as sycophantic and superficial as press, especially television, treatment of Kissinger usually is—someone from *People* magazine asked Kissinger if his dog liked the memoirs. But there were, nonetheless, notable, considered reviews, including the two mentioned above.

McGeorge Bundy showed in *Foreign Affairs* that it is absolutely false for Kissinger to claim, as he does, that the Nixon administration made it clear after the Paris peace agreement that the United States would respond with force to North Vietnamese violations and that it was Watergate that prevented this from being done. In fact no such public warning was given (private promises to President Thieu of South Vietnam were made); and Congressional and public impatience with the war long predated 1973. Noam Chomsky in *Inquiry* has pointed out that much of Kissinger's vaunted "philosophizing" is shallow: "There can be no peace without equilibrium and no justice without restraint." (Kissinger also constantly reverts to such clichés as "with the inevitability of a Greek tragedy.") Tom Wicker has described in *Rolling Stone* the absurdity of many of his positions—among them the notion that the United States and Britain should have given full support to the Smith-Muzorewa regime in Rhodesia. Had that happened, the chance that now exists for relative peace in Rhodesia would have been lost.

Theodore Draper, in *Dissent*, has noted the "scandalous" way in which Kissinger has used

official documents. Only those parts of documents that Kissinger quoted were declassified by the State Department; the documents themselves are not available. Thus no one can tell whether or not Kissinger's quotes are in context. Since then, the National Security Council has accused Kissinger of being a liar. In the foreword Kissinger claims that the declassification was conducted by Zbigniew Brzezinski's office, but the NSC says that in fact Kissinger sent only early, disjointed parts of the manuscript to them, and that the foreword "vastly overstates, at least by implication," the degree of declassification that the NSC was allowed to do.

In one of the most comprehensive reviews of all, Professor Stanley Hoffman, in the *New York Review of Books*, shows how Kissinger's bureaucratic battles in Washington and his obsession with the Soviet dimension lost opportunities for a Middle Eastern settlement in 1972. Hoffman argues also that Kissinger's grand design required that he, Kissinger, and he alone, be granted extraordinary license. "The tools of Kissinger's strategy—linkage, the unrestrained use of force for specific objectives—could be effective only in the hands of one person." He questions rigorously Kissinger's abiding belief that the struggle between Moscow and Washington absorbs every issue, every other conflict, and that every client must stand up to be counted. Is this the real world, asks Hoffman, "or does it not substitute for the real world an artificially simple and tidy one, in which friends and foes, radicals and moderates, are neatly lined up and in which nationalism—surely as important a force as Communism—gets thoroughly discounted?"

The book is, of course, filled with detail not known until now. Some of it is of great interest; many of Kissinger's set pieces are compelling. Others are plausible. The book is in parts poorly written and is often repetitive, but many reviewers have commented with grateful surprise that it is much better written than Kissinger's previous works. This is not in fact surprising at all; the book was painstakingly edited by two skilled English journalists, Oscar Turnill, deputy editor of the *Times Literary Supplement*, and Harold Evans, editor of the *Sunday Times*. With the help of Evans and Turnill (who are now working very hard to leaven Volume Two), Kissinger produced what is at times a lively narrative. At times it is also very turgid. It includes good portraits of some of the people—Gromyko and Chou En-Lai, for example—with whom he associated. His picture of Nixon is in many places unkind, but it is in no way as

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