Office of the Historian

119. Transcript of Telephone Conversation Between Secretary of State Kissinger and Israeli Foreign Minister Eban1

October 7, 1973, 5:08 p.m.

K: Good afternoon. We have now decided to go ahead long the lines we discussed earlier. Therefore, you mustn’t do anything . . . The President, not the President himself but Key Biscayne, is going to announce that we will ask for a meeting of the Security Council. We will then, around 5:30, ask the President of the Security Council for a meeting tomorrow.2 We will let it go at that for tonight. We will not indicate today whether we will table a resolution or what it will be. Don’t want to get too much . . . generated. We will table a resolution along, this is for your private information, lines we discussed. I understand you will have to speak before the Council.

E: I will have to speak very early.

K: At the Council . . . we will count on your elequence . . . and in this case wouldn’t mind if you sacrificed eloquence to length.

E: Oh, yes, I agree it often happens in inverse relation. I’ll just say we want . . . cease fire in full.

K: Not necessary for you to make any proposal as long as you discuss the situation in great detail.

E: . . . saying Egypt and Syria encroached on us and not us on them. I assure you we are keeping an eye on other Western Europeans, presume you are doing so as well.

  1. Source: National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, Kissinger Telephone Conversations, Transcripts (Telcons), Chronological File, Box 22. No classification marking. Kissinger was in Washington; Eban was in New York.↩
  2. The text of Scali’s letter to President of the UN Security Council McIntyre is in telegram 3705 from USUN, October 7. (Ibid., RG 59, Central Foreign Policy Files)↩