King Hussein of Jordan accused an “extremist Zionist group” in the United States of responsibility for the recent press reports that he had received secret funds from the Central Intelligence Agency.
In an interview in today’s Le Monde, Hussein said the recent reports in the Washington Post on his CIA involvement were provoked either by inter-administrative warring in Washington as a result of the Watergate affair or by a Zionist extremist group which “wants to prevent us from playing our part in the process of a peaceful solution to the Middle East conflict.”
Hussein, who is due to confer with President Carter next Monday in Washington, said he will tell the President that the Middle East “is headed straight to a disaster unless a serious peace negotiation is started this year.”
He said he will also draw Carter’s attention to Israel’s “new and as yet unparalleled level of military power while a belt of poverty stretches across the Arab world.” He added: “We (the Arabs) do not have the means to develop our economies, ensure the well-being of our people and finance the ruinous arms race without even having the hope of ever equaling Israel’s military might.”
Hussein, in his interview with Le Monde’s Eric Rouleau, termed Israeli Premier-designate Shimon Peres “a hawk” and said he was “not optimistic” concerning peace prospects for 1977. “I have the painful feeling that the Israeli government does not even envisage a serious peace negotiation based on the return of the territories conquered in 1967,” he said.
The King warned that “those who lead Arab public opinion to believe that peace can be established in 1977 are playing with fire. The ensuing explosion will be proportionate to the unfulfilled hopes.”
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.
