White House Denounces Libya’s Allegation That the Billy Carter Case is Due to a ‘zionist’ Campaign

The Libyan government’s allegation that Zionism was responsible for the Billy Carter case was denounced Friday by the White House as “an obvious attempt to shift the blame to others.” The White House statement said the Libyan allegations were “completely unfounded” and noted that President Carter had informed the Senate that “many policies and actions of the Libyan government are widely disapproved by our government and the majority of the American people.”

The White House said the President had called attention “specifically to Libya’s attitude toward the Palestine Liberation Organization and its support of terrorism.” The White House statement was made in response to a request by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency for comment on the Libyan charges.

The response followed reports from Tripoli that the Libyan government had declared last Thursday that its relations with Billy Carter were “normal” ties of the kind engaged in by many other prominent American citizens and institutions. The Libyan government attributed the Billy Carter controversy about those relations to a “Zionist” compaign against Billy Carter and the Libyan government.

The Tripoli statement by the Libyan Secretary General for Foreign Relations, Abroad el-Shahati, was Libya’s first formal reaction to the Billy Carter debate. Shahati was Billy Carter’s host for his first visit to Libya in September, 1978. The Shahati statement was issued through the Libyan Foreign Relations Bureau and distributed by that country’s official press agency.

Shahati said other Americans who had visited Libya “to promote friendly relations between the American and Libyan peoples based on mutual respect and common interests” included J. William Fulbright, the former Democratic Senator; Najeeb Halaby, former chairman of Pan American Airways; and Vance Hartke, former Democratic Senator from Indiana.

He said Libya had established contacts or worked out joint programs with universities in Idaho, Washington, Georgia, Louisiana, Florida, Wyoming, Michigan and the District of Columbia and had “established links with Black American and Black Muslim organizations, the Red Indians National Council, the Organizations of Arab Descendant Americans and other popular organizations.”

Shahati strongly defended Libya’s relations with Billy Carter as completely proper and asserted that the controversy about the President’s brother’s ties with Libya were due to “an aggressive Zionist campaign” against Billy Carter, Libya and Libya’s allies. His statement asserted that “Zionism would not hesitate to use any deviant means to serve its interests and to check any unapproved relations the American people wish to establish with other peoples.

Meanwhile, the White House also denied a statement by Libyan leader Muammar Qoddafi that he was promised last December that Carter, if reelected, would make Mideast policy in favor of the Palestinians. He also claimed in an interview with the New York Times in Tripoli that the White House had shown “great concern” in mending relations over the past six months through the Libyan Embassy in Washington.

He claimed that Libya’s representative in Washington initiated contacts with Carter, National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski “and has been in touch with other American officials, calling on them personally or by telephone, which, of course, is perfectly natural,” the Times quoted him as saying. But Qoddafi added that Billy Carter had played no role in the dialogue.

White House press secretary Jody Powell said that no message “has been conveyed, directly or indirectly, by anyone at the White House” that Carter would adopt a more friendly attitude toward the Palestinians.