Cabinet Withholds Decision on Return to Talks; Nixon’s Reassurance Not Sufficient

The Cabinet decided today to withhold a decision on Israel’s return to the Jarring talks pending further “clarifications” from the United States on its backing of Israel. The decision was announced in an official communique following today’s Cabinet session which discussed President Nixon’s reply on Friday to a message sent to him by Premier Golda Meir earlier last week. The discussion of the Nixon letter was said to have been brief. The Cabinet’s decision to delay a stand on reactivating the Jarring talks was reportedly made for all practical purposes at a private meeting yesterday of Mrs. Meir and her closest Cabinet associates and was endorsed by the full Cabinet today. They reportedly considered the Nixon letter satisfactory insofar as the President re-affirmed his promises of military and economic aid to Israel during the next two years. But it was said to fall considerably short of the political guarantees Mrs. Meir had asked for and therefore required clarification. Highly placed sources here said today that the subject of clarifications would be raised with the U.S. through diplomatic channels, not through Defense Minister Moshe Dayan who leaves for the U.S. next week for discussions with top Nixon administration officials. Gen. Dayan will be briefed by Mrs. Meir on Wednesday. The sources said the government would like to get its clarifications from Washington before Gen. Dayan’s departure so that he can discuss final details with the U.S. without being hamstrung by uncertainty over the government’s policy on major problems.

Observers here noted however that until today’s Cabinet announcement it appeared that the government would wait until Gen. Dayan returned from the U.S. before it decided on the future of the Jarring talks. Gen. Dayan, in fact, was supposed to bring up Mrs. Meir’s political points at his meetings in Washington which may include a meeting with President Nixon. The use of normal “diplomatic channels” to raise these points with the U.S. indicated a sudden down-grading of Gen. Dayan’s mission and an assertion of the Foreign Ministry’s authority in the sphere of foreign affairs. Foreign Minister Abba Eban is known to be less than pleased by Gen. Dayan’s recent political statements and reportedly was opposed to having him meet with U.S. leaders on his forthcoming trip. But Mrs. Meir announced last week that the Defense Minister was authorized to speak in her name on “defense matters” while in Washington. Observers here noted at the time that in the current situation there is no sharp distinction between “defense matters” and foreign policy matters. It was disclosed meanwhile that Mr. Eban has informed Ambassador Gunnar V. Jarring that the Israeli government was willing to resume talks with Jordan which were interrupted last August when Israel withdrew from the peace negotiations because of Egyptian truce violations. The Foreign Minister also wrote to Dr. Jarring that Israel was interested in entering peace discussions with Lebanon. Mr. Eban’s letter was in reply to a letter he received from the United Nations mediator in which the latter stated that he still considered his peace mission to derive from the UN Security Council’s Resolution 242 of Nov. 22,1967.

GALILI: NO RUSH TO REACH DECISION; EBAN: TEST THE WATERS BEFORE PLUNGING IN

The Foreign Ministry said today that Mr. Eban will visit London for four days between Dec. 13-20 and could confer with Foreign Secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home and possibly with other British leaders. President Nixon received Mrs. Meir’s note last Monday and his reply was delivered to her Friday by U.S. Ambassador Walworth Barbour. The unexpected promptness of the reply indicated that the President wanted his letter to reach the Israeli Cabinet in time for today’s session. Political sources here said the President considered his reply an adequate basis for Israel’s return to the Jarring talks and hoped the Cabinet would make an affirmative decision today. The Cabinet apparently did not agree with Mr. Nixon because of his failure to provide certain political guarantees. Mrs. Meir had asked the U.S. for three promises: public dissociation from the territorial map proposed by Secretary of State William P. Rogers a year ago; American use of the veto in the United Nations Security Council to block Arab attempts to re-interpret the crucial Resolution 242; and more active political support in the General Assembly to prevent the adoption of resolutions unfavorable to Israel. Mr. Nixon’s military pledges to Israel were reportedly “more specific than before.” But he apparently did not offer to put them on a contractual basis nor did he offer any specific guarantee of what the U.S. would do if Soviet pilots and advisors became involved in a new outbreak of fighting between Egypt and Israel. Some observers believe that even without these guarantees, the U.S. expects an affirmative decision soon from Israel with regard to the Jarring talks.

Nevertheless, the Israeli government believes it still has ample time to reach a decision on the Jarring talks. Israel Galili, a Minister-Without-Portfolio who is close to Mrs. Meir, said at a Labor Party meeting yesterday that the Nixon letter will not be discussed hastily. He said military and political circumstances enable Israel to take its time in reaching a decision. Mr. Eban told a Labor Alignment meeting in Haifa Thursday night that while Israel could not boycott the Jarring talks indefinitely, she need not return to them blindly because of Egyptian pressure. Mr. Eban took an obvious slap at his Cabinet colleague, Gen. Dayan, when he said “We have decided not to plunge into the ice-cold waters before testing them with our toes.” Gen. Dayan, in urging the resumption of peace negotiations without too stringent conditions, has warned on several occasions that Israel would have to “plunge into very cold water” in the interests of a peace settlement. He added, “having done that, the dipping into such waters would not be so cold after all.” Mr. Eban maintained that Egypt needed the cease-fire more than Israel did and repeated his earlier rejection of President Sadat’s demand for an Israeli timetable on withdrawal from the occupied Arab territories. “What is more essential is an Egyptian timetable for making permanent peace with Israel,” he said. (Secretary of State Rogers told a NATO ministerial meeting in Brussels Thursday that in the Middle East “the climate for peaceful settlement has never been better.” But according to most observers, American optimism is not shared by the other Western allies.)