Word: pullback
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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With Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and U.S. Ambassador to Cairo Herman Eilts acting as intermediaries, Israel two weeks ago had presented to Cairo its own proposals concerning a further pullback in the Sinai. The interminable negotiations center around the strategic Mitla and Giddi passes in the desert. In its latest offer, Israel agreed to let U.S. electronic technicians operate the key listening post at Umm Khisheib above the passes. But Jerusalem proposed additional Israeli posts near by and insisted upon keeping Israeli troops on the eastern rims of the passes as a defensive measure...
Since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the 101-mile-long canal has been little more than a fortified ditch. The Israeli pullback into the Sinai in the aftermath of the October 1973 war still leaves it open to easy attack. But with both banks now under Egyptian control. President Anwar Sadat gambled that he could open it again. To underscore his seriousness, Sadat also approved a $10 billion five-year plan to rebuild the ruined cities along the canal's banks and construct new airports, rail lines and communications facilities in the area...
...CURRENT FIGHTING. The [South Vietnamese] pullback is now being interpreted as a great North Vietnamese victory. The North Vietnamese did not take Military Region I and II by force of arms, but by a government decision to evacuate. That does not make the North Vietnamese army ten feet tall. A year ago, Hanoi had put the war on the back burner. The level of violence would have got down to the endemic level. Then came the traumatic period: the Nixon resignation, appropriation cuts, a new Congress, and the Soviets quadrupled their aid to the North Vietnamese army in the past...
Kissinger linked the uncertainty over U.S. aid to Cambodia and South Viet Nam with other current U.S. diplomatic setbacks, including his difficulties in arranging an Israeli pullback in the Sinai. At week's end, with the Arab-Israeli talks deadlocked. Kissinger gave up and flew home to Washington, leaving the future for peace in the Middle East in disarray (see THE WORLD...
...nonbelligerent intentions from Egypt before withdrawing further in the Sinai. The Egyptians wanted a military document that would extend the disengagement agreement it signed with Israel in January 1974; the Israelis insisted that any new deal involve political agreements, in order to make an expensive and risky military pullback worthwhile...