Israel Foreign Minister Yigal Allon said here yesterday that the efforts to impeach President Nixon have not affected Israeli-American relations and that in his meetings with Administration officials in Washington last week he found a “very functionable Administration.” Interviewed on the NBC-TV “Today” program, Allon said that while the impeachment question is an American affair, Israelis “see in President Nixon a great friend.” But he noted that Vice-President Gerald Ford is also considered a friend of Israel.
Allon said that while his meeting with Ford last week was a courtesy call, “it was of some substance, too” and “I found him very well informed and we had a very interesting talk about matters in the Middle East, that we could really exchange views on that matter.” Asked what would happen if Ford becomes President, Allen said, “I don’t see anything like a change in his friendliness when be becomes–takes a high office.”
(In Israel today, the independent daily newspaper Haaretz said in an editorial that the latest Watergate disclosure means “We must gear ourself for a period…where the American Administration will play a secondary role in international politics.”)
In answer to other questions Allon said: The Soviets were increasing their arms supplies, especially to Iraq and Syria, partly as means “to maintain and increase their influence in the Middle East”; a new Middle East war in the foreseeable future is “possible” but “not inevitable”; the problem of a Palestinian identity should be solved through negotiations with Jordan.
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