Secretary of State Cyrus Vance today took responsibility for the foul-up that resulted in the United States voting for a resolution on West Bank settlements and Jerusalem.
In a statement to the press today following President Carter’s statement last night repudiating the U.S. vote and UN Ambassador Donald McHenry’s report this morning that he had followed his instructions to the letter, the State Department’s chief spokesman Hodding Carter said:
“The Secretary of State accepts responsibility for the failure in communications. I’m not going to go into it further nor am I going into technical or staff procedures in which the failure occurred. The statement is simple on this. The Secretary accepts responsibility for the foul-up.”
Asked why the Administration took more than 48 hours before announcing its repudiation of the Security Council vote, spokesman Carter replied, “it was a matter of internal deliberations” about which he was not going to discuss. Some 10 hours before the Presidential statement was made the State Department was publicly defending all aspects of the resolution.
Reporters appeared highly skeptical that a failure of communications was basic to the foul-up. They questioned whether the Presidential election and protests against the resolution were factors. Hodding Carter refused to be drawn into discussions on this. He said at one point “the President is speaking here to his own consideration what should or not be in it (the resolution).”
The spokesman indicated that the timing of the resolution was a factor in the President’s repudiation of it. In response to a question as to where the resolution stands now, Hodding Carter said “there were aspects that do not at this point accurately reflect what we think should be the proper stance in the anticipation of the autonomy negotiations.”
The spokesman emphasized that “the policy on Jerusalem has not charged. Insofar as the Security Council resolution is concerned we were prepared to support a resolution which reiterated our policy on settlements without raising the issue involved in the question of Jerusalem itself. It simply did not seem useful at this point from our point of view, to have that reiteration. That is the reason for the President’s statement last night.”
Spokesman Carter also said “it was not a useful thing at this point” to involve the Jerusalem issue. In this connection he said, “We have to make policy based” on the reference to the Camp David proceedings in which the U.S. based its Jerusalem policy on statements made by the U.S. officials in 1967 following the Six-Day War, which Carter stressed, is still the basis for U.S. policy.
RAPS CARTER FOR DOUBLE-TALK
In a related development, Patrick Lucey, manager of Sen. Edward Kennedy’s campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination, said “President Carter’s labored explanation of the latest foreign policy blunder of his Administration is bizarre and unbelievable” and “calls into question his competence in the management of foreign policy.”
Lucey, in a statement issued in New York City, said “It is incredible that the President of the United States, after consulting with his top foreign advisors, would recommend that the United States reverse its policy of support for Israel in the United Nations. It is outrageous that, at this delicate moment, the United States would shift its position and give aid and comfort to the enemies of our friend and ally, Israel.”
According to the Massachusetts Democrat’s campaign manager, “The President has compounded that failure by attempting to double-talk his way out of responsibility for a decision that is extremely damaging to the United States and Israel both.”
AJCONGRESS NOT SATISFIED
Meanwhile, the American Jewish Congress said it was “not satisfied” by Carter’s repudiation of the U.S. vote. AJCongress president Howard Squadron charged that by voting for the Security Council resolution the Carter Administration “has betrayed its commitments to Israel and has caused a disservice to our own country’s interests.”
He said that while the President admitted error insofar as the resolution pertained to Jerusalem, “there are many other aspects of this resolution which contradict earlier U.S. positions and which undermine the Camp David process. We are not satisfied with the Administration’s error, limited as it is to the resolution’s references to Jerusalem.”
According to Squadron, the resolution “preempts” the negotiating process called for in the Camp David accords by “identifying the West bank as ‘Palestinian territory.’ Our government has never before taken that position,” Squadron said. He also claimed that by supporting the resolution that called for the dismantling of all settlements on the West Bank “the Carter Administration has placed Israel’s security in hazard. Our government has never before taken this position.”
Squadron charged that “the clear intention of the UN Security Council resolution is to sabotage the very Camp David process in which the Carter Administration has taken such pride. That our country should have acceded to this maneuver in the vain expectation of currying favor among Islamic states is disheartening and disillusioning,” he said.
Late this afternoon the Conference of Presidents of Major American. Jewish Organizations met in special session in New York to discuss the developments of the past several days dealing with the U.S. vote in the Security Council.
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.
