The State Department said today that three documents remain to be completed in connection with the Egyptian-Israeli peace-treaty to be signed here Monday but the Department emphasized that it expected completion before then.
These documents are the military annex, which is part of the treaty itself in which the factor of the timing of Israel’s withdrawal from the Sinai oil fields remains to be negotiated between Egypt and Israel a “memorandum of agreement” between the United States and Israel dealing with the treaty itself and a memorandum between Israel and the United States in which the United States undertakes to guarantee Israel’s oil supply for 15 years.
The “memorandum of agreement” is understood to involve the specific undertakings by the United States and Israel in the event the Israeli-Egyptian treaty is not carried out. Whether this memorandum will include a specific reference to the Palestine Liberation Organization was not confirmed by State Department spokesman Hodding Carter, who said he would not discuss the contents of that memorandum pending its completion. In the 1975 Sinai pact, the U.S. assured Israel it would not talk to the PLO until the PLO affirmed Limited States Security Council Resolution 242 and Israel’s right to exist.
When spokesman Carter was asked several times whether this assurance would be included in the “memorandum of agreement,” he declined to be specific, but he noted he noted he had reiterated the U.S. position at his briefing yesterday on the treaty process. The matter of U.S. aid to Israel to help cover costs of Israel’s Sinai withdrawal will be part of that memorandum.
Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan, Carter said, would meet tonight at the State Department with Secretary of State Cyrus Vance to work on the U.S.-Israeli memoranda Egyptian and Israeli negotiators will meanwhile work on the annex. Carter said the United States would not publish the treaty “until the complete package is in hand.” Dayan is due here early this evening from Israel.
(Prior to his departure from Israel, Dayan said that even if the bilateral issues between the U.S. and Israel are not finalized by Monday, the signing of the treaty need not be delayed. However, he added, any unresolved issues between Israel and Egypt, like the question of Israel’s evacuation from the Sinai oil fields, must be settled before the signing takes place).
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.
