Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, Simcha Dinitz, held an unannounced meeting yesterday at the State Department at which one of the topics discussed was Israel’s request for $2.3 billion in military and economic aid for the fiscal year 1978, starting next Oct. 1, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency learned.
A report that the Ford Administration’s Office of Management and Budget had rejected Israel’s request was not true, the JTA was told. The OMB is still studying the request and. in any case, it will have to be reviewed by Bert Lance. who was announced Friday by President-elect Jimmy Carter as his choice for the OMB post. The Israeli request is for $1.5 billion in military aid and $800 million in economic aid.
The Carter Administration is expected to submit its foreign aid program to the Congress in March or April. The $2.3 billion is about the average in aid to Israel from the United States during the past two fiscal years, which took into consideration Israel’s loss of the Abu Rodeis oil fields to Egypt in the second interim Sinai accord.
MIDEAST SITUATION REVIEWED
Kissinger and Dinitz also discussed the Lebanese situation and the general Middle East situation. Dinitz was reported to have thanked Kissinger for U.S. support of Israel in two developments at the United Nations.
One was support for the Security Council resolution extending, with no conditions, the UN Disengagement Observer Force mandate on the Golan Heights for another six months. The other was U.S. opposition in the General Assembly to an Arab-sponsored resolution criticizing Israel for its policies in the administered areas.
Israel was reported to view the U.S. opposition to the Assembly resolution as a reversal of the U.S. position in the Security Council on a “consensus” resolution which had virtually the same language as the Assembly resolution. The JTA was informed that the U.S. did not wish in the Security Council action to oppose a “consensus” stand but that, on a formal vole against Israel, as in the Assembly resolution, the U.S. did not wish to oppose Israel.
In a related development, the State Department said Friday that a report that the U.S. would sell Israel 300 F-16 planes was “speculative” and that it would not even say that it was a “ballpark” figure. The Department reported that Washington is studying the quantity and time of delivery of F-16s which Israel has asked the U.S. to provide, but there was no mention of how many planes were involved.
Department spokesman Robert Funseth said the U.S. had agreed in principle a year ago to supply planes such as the F-16s to replace. Israel’s “existing inventory.” The U.S. decision on this matter, it is understood, probably will be left by the Ford Administration to the incoming Carter foreign affairs establishment. It ultimately will have to go to Congress for approval as will President Ford’s pledge in October to supply Israel with sophisticated military equipment.
ISRAEL CONFIDENT OF GETTING F-16S
(In Jerusalem, Premier Yitzhak Rabin told the Cabinet today that there is no doubt that Israel will get the F-16 planes from the U.S. The only questions still undecided are how many planes will be purchased and how they will be financed. He said of the $2.3 billion in economic aid requested by Israel from the U.S. for fiscal 1977-78, $1.5 billion was for military items. The exact amount Israel will be getting is still not known, Rabin added.)
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
