'Peace offensive' a Soviet threat, Kissinger warns

Former US Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger warned in a speech Jan. 7 that the United States should not worry about a Soviet invasion of Iran or Pakistan anytime soon, but should instead be wary of a "peace offensive" from Moscow. It is a historical pattern for the Soviet leaders, after a military takeover of another nation such as Afghanistan, to consolidate their gains and then make a peace offering to the West, Dr. Kissinger said. He speculated that the Soviets will approach Europeans in a few months, hoping to split them from the US.

And he recommended that the US seek no defense pact with China to counter future Soviet moves, suggesting that it would provoke Moscow to do the very thing the US wants to avoid, Monitor correspondent Clayton Jones reports.

Dr. Kissinger, speaking here before a retail lumber association, claimed that America's cexcessive conciliatons" to Soviet moves in Angola, Cuba, Ethopia, South yemen, and other places in recent years helped to allow the invasion of Afghanistan. Relations between Washington and moscow are at "a very low point," he added, and the US faces a threat at least as serIOus as that faced in the late 1930s from Germany.