The doctor versus the judges
(Filed: 28/04/2002)


HENRY KISSINGER'S visit to London last week was overshadowes by the campaign of European judges to settle 30-year-old scores. In his only interview of the trip, he tells Matthew d'Ancona why he is undeterred.


'If you're here to see Kissinger, you are scum," chants the mob outside the Royal Albert Hall. Well, I guess that's me, then.

On the road, dozens of demonstrators are blocking the traffic in a sit-down protest. Their comrades brandish placards with slogans such as "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer", which seem to hold the good doctor responsible for just about every misfortune to befall humanity since the Flood.


Henry Kissinger
Inside the hall, 2,800 businessmen are awaiting Henry Kissinger's speech to the Institute of Directors' annual convention. But first I am whisked off to meet him in a tiny, brightly-lit changing room which is being used as an improvised audience chamber for the morning.

As I enter, Lord Young of Graffham, Margaret Thatcher's Trade and Industry Secretary, is leaving. Deep in the bowels of the Albert Hall, the baying crowd can no longer be heard. But Dr Kissinger's numerous Special Branch officers are taking no chances: officially, I am told, he is not here yet.

In fact, he is most definitely here. Reclining on a sofa, immaculate in dark suit and maroon polka dot tie, the former American Secretary of State takes the melee around him in his stride, issuing instructions to his entourage in the unmistakable, slow baritone.

His visit has been overshadowed by requests from French and Spanish judicial investigators to question him in connection with "Operation Condor", an alleged campaign of terror in Latin America during the 1970s when he was in office. Has it spoiled his trip to Britain to be hounded in this way?

"Look," he says, examining the back of his hand, "this is, as it happens, the first country I came to after I left Germany in 1938.

"It was only for a few weeks, but, nevertheless, it was my first experience of freedom. It's a country in which I served in the 84th infantry division in 1944. It is a country with which I have a long association and I have many friends here."

True: but that hasn't stopped Baltasar Garzon - the magistrate who attempted to extradite General Pinochet in 1998 - and others from trying to intercept the 78-year-old Dr Kissinger on his trip to London.

The campaign, he says, is an abuse of the principles it claims to uphold: "What they are attempting to do is to use universal human rights to settle scores from 30 years ago. They're not making any charges involving universal violations. They're getting into specific issues of the management of American foreign policy with respect to one very geographically confined situation."

He is annoyed by "major misrepresentation" in the press of the last attempt to apprehend him, in Paris last year. On that occasion, Judge Roger Le Loire issued a summons to Dr Kissinger to appear as a witness in the Pinochet case.

The matter was handed over to the US Government and he did not, as was widely reported, "flee" the French capital: "I maintained my regular schedule and I left on the flight two days later exactly as planned."

The real question is whether Dr Kissinger, chased around Europe by campaigning lawyers, expects ultimately to face cross-examination. "The issue last time was alleged complicity in the disappearance of a Frenchman in Argentina [Jean-Yves Claudet-Fernandez, a member of the Chilean Left, who disappeared in Buenos Aires in 1975].

"I'd never heard of the Frenchman - as you would expect. I'd never heard of the case. But my position is that if the US Government thinks it is appropriate for me to answer the questions of foreign judges about the conduct of American policy I will cooperate to the fullest extent."

This seems an unlikely outcome, given that there is absolutely no respectable evidence of his own or the US Government's involvement in these cases. Even so he believes that the new vogue for pursuing unsettled scores from the Cold War using human rights legislation may be storing up serious trouble for the future.

"People should ask whether it is actually feasible to conduct international policy if high officials, 30 years after the event, are hounded on tactical matters, on individual matters about which common sense tells you they couldn't possibly have any knowledge. The pursuit of high officials of foreign governments - especially friendly governments - should be reserved for truly major human rights violations."

Nonetheless, it is clear that being hounded by continental lawyers has not diminished his sense of humour (later, he says the reason that he speaks so slowly is that he is translating himself into English). He chuckles when I quote a passage from his most recent book Does America Need A Foreign Policy? (2001) on future diplomacy in the Middle East in which he predicted that "the American contribution will depend on its ability to insist on a strategic and political concept for the enterprise".

He knows what I am going to ask: do President Bush and his recent envoy in the Middle East, Colin Powell, have such a "concept"? The man whose shuttle diplomacy secured the Arab-Israeli ceasefire in 1973 smiles wryly, and chooses his words with care.

"I do not think they have yet settled on what the precise concept is, but I hope they will before Colin Powell launches himself into the region again. On this particular trip, his mission was to calm the situation. And that he did."

He admits that he was "concerned at the beginning" that America might be seen to be weakening its position on Palestinian terrorism, but applauds Powell for "eliminating the incipient fatalism" on both sides of the conflict.

On the day we meet, the papers are full of stories about the Bethlehem siege and the aftermath of the Jenin confrontation, with calls for international diplomatic intervention becoming ever more clamorous.

Dr Kissinger's warning is that the objectives of any subsequent interference must be utterly realistic: "When one enters a negotiation, one ought to be able to describe the outcome towards which one is aiming," he says.

"I believe that simple coexistence between the Israelis and Arabs would be a tremendous achievement. It should not simply be a ratification of the status quo. It should give the Palestinians satisfaction of some of their demands". But questions such as the fate of Palestinian refugees and the final borders of a Palestinian state must, he says, be deferred for now.

As for Yasser Arafat, Dr Kissinger believes that only pressure from Arab states can dislodge him. "It's not possible for Israel to say who should be the Palestinian negotiator.

We should say to the Arab states: given your interests, and given your constructive approach, you have to settle who should perform that role. And if you decide on Arafat, you have to take into account what will happen if he is untrustworthy."

Dr Kissinger is full of praise for the Prime Minister's conduct since September 11, although he says that if he lived in Britain he would probably vote Conservative.

In answer to one of my questions, he admits that Tony Blair's evangelical foreign policy - which he calls "Gladstonian" - contrasts sharply with his own "Disraelian" preference for realpolitik and geopolitical realism. "I question the idea of universal crusades," he says, "because I think, looking at it as an American, they will eventually go beyond our capacity."

Realistic to the last: unlike the mob outside, and, one suspects, the judges who think they can outfox this formidable survivor.