Former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger urged today that the United States enhance its military presence in the Middle East to counter growing Soviet activity there. Speaking at a news conference midway through what he has repeatedly termed a private visit to the area, Mr. Kissinger said that no regional leader could have confidence in a Rapid Deployment Force, as envisioned by President Carter, that remained in the United States without concrete facilities on the spot.
He also urged that West European and American policies on the Middle East be coordinated; he rejected recent European stands favoring Palestinian self-determination, or statehood, dismissing ''the theory that if we are going to get a Palestinian state, it would quickly or relatively quickly cause the problems in the Middle East to disappear.'' ''The vital interest of the United States and Europe cannot be separated,'' he said. ''Therefore, I consider it impossible that there can be two different approaches that are both correct.''
Although the former secretary has no official standing in the President-elect Ronald Reagan's administration, he is expected to brief Mr. Reagan and his staff and therefore is being received as an important figure. Traveling on the private jet of William S. Paley, chairman of the board of CBS Inc., Mr. Kissinger saw President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt last week in Cairo, flew to Somalia for a talk with President Mohammed Siad Barre and during two days in Israel met with a range of Government and opposition leaders, including Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon, former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, leader of the oppostion Labor Party, and former Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan.
He toured East and West Jerusalem with Mayor Teddy Kollek and said the city should remain united but did not specify under whose sovereignty. He flew to the Etzion Airfield, the modern Israeli base in a slice of the Sinai that is to be returned to Egypt next year. That trip, with Israeli military officers, raised excited speculation in the Israeli press that he would recommend to Mr. Reagan that the United States use at least some of the base. But the former secretary appeared to dismiss the idea at his news conference by reporting his impression that Egypt would not allow it.
He did call for an American military role in the region, however. ''If you look at the map,'' he said, ''you see a large Soviet presence in Afghanistan, a large Soviet-supported presence in Ethiopia, Soviet-supported operations out of Libya, and I do not think that the leaders of this area who are concerned about this can visualize the concept of a Rapid Deployment Force that comes from the United States, 8,000 miles away, into what?'' He urged two steps: ''One is to put some visible American presence into this perimeter along the lines of the facilities that have already been negotiated by the Carter Administration, and they should now be given some concrete content. That would at least indicate that we are there, and that attacking key countries is not a matter in which the United States can be disinterested. Secondly, we require for our own country a strategic doctrine that enables us to be relevant to these crises, together with other interested countries.''
Source: New York Times
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