The White House said today that Secretary of State Cyrus Vance has responded “very clearly” to a disparaging remark by President Anwar Sadat of Egypt against the former United States Ambassador to the United Nations Arthur Goldberg but indicated that the Administration was not considering a further rebuke to the Egyptian leader.
Presidential Press Secretary Jody Powell said that Vance had expressed “our view” of Goldberg’s services “in no uncertain terms” when he was asked by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency if President Carter would ask Sadat to apologize to the American people and to Goldberg personally for his remarks. Sadat, in a Cairo speech last Saturday marking the 26th anniversary of the overthrow of king Farouk, said that “If Carter had been in power in 1967 instead of the Zionist, Arthur Goldberg, we would not have suffered as we have suffered.”
Goldberg served the Johnson Administration as Ambassador to the UN where he helped draft Security Council Resolution 242, which established the framework for a Middle East peace settlement. Mast recently, Goldberg served President Carter, in ambassadorial rank, as chief of the U.S. delegation to last spring’s conference in Belgrade on implementation of the Helsinki Final Act.
VANCE PRAISES GOLDBERG
Powell said that Vance’s response “certainly speaks for the Administration and the President.” When the JTA asked if that meant the President will not go any further in the Goldberg matter, Powell replied, “I don’t know just exactly what we should do in response to wards.” He suggested “it may be appropriate to escalate into something.”
Vance volunteered a remark during the course of an interview on the ABC-TV “Issues and Answers” program yesterday about “a statement” critical of Goldberg but did not mention that Sadat was its source. When a reporter suggesting that he was referring to Sadat’s praise of Carter “compared with what he thought Goldberg should have been doing in 1967,” Vance replied, That is right.” He described Goldberg as “one of the finest public servants this country has ever known.”
At the State Department today, chief spokesman Hodding Carter observed in connection with the Goldberg matter that “It is far more useful for negotiations and discussions in normal diplomatic channels” not to aim “at any one participant or party or side.” Goldberg, himself, was not available in his New York law office for comment.
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.
