THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973Pugwash activist. He too indicates that the nuclear aspect was merely an excuse for
their meetings. York appears to have both misdated this link and exaggerated its
significance when in 1998 he called it “one of the most important of those combina-
tions” that Pugwash provided for “people to meet each other at a time when there
were no other good places to do that. ... They were entirely secret, these meetings.
They were fully sanctioned ... by both governments.”^35
Primakov arrived in Israel on 28 August 1971, was lodged in an anonymous Tel
Aviv apartment, and unlike Louis’s talks, his were never leaked. To his hosts, he
described his visit as the first time the Kremlin had sent anyone to Israel since the
rupture in ’67, “not to name the lower journalist.” He claimed a much higher status
for himself, “close to the top leadership,” and warned menacingly that he would not
like to return with nothing beyond an Israeli demand to change Soviet positions.
Primakov’s memoir contrasts markedly with the Israeli records of his talks. These
include not only summaries but also transcripts from recordings, despite Primakov’s
demand that none be made (the verbatim quotes in his own memoir appear, however,
to indicate that he did the same, or took copious notes). Indeed, the comparison is
similar to Kissinger’s and Dobrynin’s contrasting accounts of their conversations, and
illustrates the peril of relying on only one side’s papers.
For example, Primakov denigrates his first meeting—with Eban, the day after his
arrival—as a tiresome “lecture” read out by the foreign minister. But in the transcript,
Eban hardly gets a word in for the first eight pages. Then, after a few diplomatic
sentences about his difficulty to be polite in describing Soviet policies, Eban was
brusquely interrupted by Primakov with a demand not to engage in “propaganda.”
Despite his suspicions about Sadat, it was Primakov who started off with an omi-
nous blast at the Israelis: any accord must be acceptable to the Arabs, he said, “because
if they won’t accept the arrangement ... they would be willing to sacrifice a lot of
people, more than Israel could sacrifice.” He charged that the Arabs had made steps
toward Israel “under the influence of the Soviet Union,” but these were not recipro-
cated. Most emphatically, he declared that “the Soviet Union will not assist in a
political arrangement if it will involve the liquidation of the Soviet positions, our
military positions, or if it will bring about an approach ... of our potential enemies
nearer to our borders.”
This came in response to a statement by the ever-unpredictable Dayan, which
Primakov claimed to have read en route, describing Israel as part of NATO.
Primakov pointedly said he was “happy that Israel is not a member of NATO, an
organization that is to be used to destroy or limit Soviet positions in the
Mediterranean.”^36 Nowhere in the talks did he give away the proposal to withdraw
Soviet troops from Eg ypt.
From the meeting with Meir that he expected to be climactic, Primakov came away
disappointed—or so he told her adviser, Hanan Baron. Since it was she who had initi-
ated an exchange with Moscow, he expected new ideas from her. Baron replied that