Fisher 'Informally Invited' Sadat To Harvard Last Year

Roger D. Fisher, professor of Law, said yesterday that when he was in Cairo last year he extended an "informal invitation" to President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt to visit the University while Sadat was on tour in the U.S.

"The invitation was preliminary and very informal" Fisher said, and was made through friends in the Egyptian government. Fisher said he never received a response from Sadat and he does not even know if Sadat ever heard of the invitation.

Sadat's ten day stay in the U.S. will include visits to New York, and three other U.S. cities, but not Boston or Cambridge, a spokesman at the Egyptian Embassy in Washington said yesterday.

Fisher said he again suggested a visit to the University by Sadat to the Egyptian Embassy last month while he was in communication with the Embassy on another matter. He said he extended the invitations on his own initiative without notifying University administrators.

Dr. Chase N. Peterson '52, vice president for alumni affairs and development, and Daniel Steiner '54, general counsel to the University, both said yesterday that they never heard of the request.

Over 500 Invitations

"An enormous amount of requests for appearances by Sadat" have been sent to the State Department, Gardner Brown, desk officer at the Egyptian desk of the U.S State Department said yesterday. "Because of security limitations and a shortage of time," he said, "it is impossible to accomodate the more than 500 invitations that have been sent to the Embassy."

The spokesman said that Sadat met with President Ford, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger '50, and Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger '50 yesterday.

Sadat will travel to New York today to speak before the United Nations General Assembly. New York Mayor Abraham Beame has declined to officially welcome Sadat to New York.

The New York Times reported yesterday that Beame said "it would be an act of hypocrisy on my part to participate in any welcoming ceremony with any chief of state who has been party to the United Nations resolution which seeks to revive a new form of racism as a substitute for the principles of understanding and peaceful negotiations upon which this world body was formed."

Sadat's visit to the United States is the first official visit of an Egyptian head of state to the U.S.