Newsweek Editor Believes Egypt Will Continue Cease-fire, Eventually Sign Peace Treaty

Arnaud de Borchgrave, the senior editor of Newsweek magazine who interviewed President Anwar Sadat in Cairo last week, said here today that he believed Egypt would continue to observe the cease-fire beyond its 30-day deadline of March 7 and that it may eventually sign a peace treaty with Israel. The American journalist is in Jerusalem for meetings with Premier Golda Meir and Foreign Minister Abba Eban. He was interviewed on the Kol Israel “News-Reel.” In the course of his interview with de Borchgrave, Sadat proposed reopening the Suez Canal within six months if Israeli forces withdraw to a line east of El Arish, a coastal town on the Sinai peninsula about 30 miles from the old Israel-Egyptian frontier. According to de Borchgrave that proposal represented a tacit concession by Sadat that the Gaza Strip and Rafah would remain on the Israeli side of the border. The Newsweek editor made much of the fact that Sadat mentioned the words “peace treaty” twice during their interview. He said the late President Gamal Abdel Nasser had always said he would never sign a peace agreement with Israel, De Borchgrave, who interviewed Nasser for his magazine, compared the two Egyptian leaders. He said he got the impression that Sadat was a much wiser, more thoughtful and more cultured man than Nasser and that he was “firmly in the saddle.” According to de Borchgrave, Sadat would never have proposed what he did unless he was confident of his position.

The Newsweek editor said he didn’t think hostilities would be renewed on March 7. “My guess is that as there is so much movement right now behind the scenes that Mr. (United Nations Secretary General) U Thant will be able to report to the Security Council that there has been progress which, in turn, would give President Sadat an opening to say that as there has been progress, they would continue to restrain themselves,” he said. He added that he did not think the Egyptians would set any new cease-fire deadlines but would continue to observe the truce as long as progress continued to be made. Israeli circles here took issue with de Borchgrave’s optimistic outlook. They said they saw no specific change in Sadat’s attitude. They said the Egyptian President had rudely dismissed Premier Meir’s counter proposals for re-opening the Suez Canal and they thought his remarks to Newsweek were intended primarily to court American public opinion. One source observed that Sadat’s proposals on the Suez Canal in his Newsweek interview, were “tougher and more rigid” than his first proposal to reopen the waterway made before the Egyptian National Assembly two weeks ago. In the interim, they said, he learned of American support of Four Power guarantees which he would favor over any peace agreement and therefore he felt more confident in taking a harder line.