Egypt is remaining firm in its demand for a prior commitment from Israel that it has no territorial claims before any further direct talks are held. This, it is reliably learned, was the burden of U.S. special Middle East envoy Alfred Atherton’s report to Premier Menachem Begin and top aides yesterday on his talks with Egyptian Leaders this week. Atherton saw Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and met several times with Foreign Minister Mohammed Kaamel.
An Israeli source described the situation now as “a very serious deadlock.” U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance would be coming to the area this weekend, the source said, in a rescue mission to see if anything could be salvaged. Begin said publicly after meeting with Atherton that Israel remained ready to meet with Egypt and the U.S. anywhere.
During the session with Atherton the Premier is understood to have firmly rejected Sadat’s condition as a diktat. Perhaps, Begin said, Sadat could issue diktats in his own country, but he could not do so to his ostensible partner in negotiations, Israel.
Barring a dramatic development, all hope of a Sinai tripartite conference next week seems lost, and Vance is expected to visit Jerusalem and Cairo and then return straight home. Israeli sources believe Vance will set his sights on the modest–but crucial–goal of securing Egypt’s assent to continue the negotiations at some time in the future, leaving specific arrangements to be worked out at a later date.
Some observers here theorize that the moment is approaching when the U.S. will issue its own peace proposals–but statements by Vance himself and by State Department spokesman Hodding Corter in Washington seem to play down that possibility.
Some Israeli policymakers are turning now to the idea of a partial settlement as the only feasible way of salvaging something from the negotiations. Under such an arrangement Egypt would agree to many components of “peaceful relations”–but not a formal peace treaty, in return for a substantial part of Sinai. Israeli leaders are likely, according to well-placed sources here, to test American reaction to this idea in their talks with Vance.
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.
