Premier Menachem Begin criticized today, at the regular Cabinet meeting, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s proposal for a new summit meeting of Begin, Sadat and President Carter to be held after the American Presidential election on Nov. 4.
The proposal was contained in a 35-page letter to Begin and observers here said the effect of such a proposal, if implemented, would be to freeze the sagging West Bank Gaza talks until the end of this year. The observers also declared that the proposal reflected Sadat’s apparent assessment that no progress in the autonomy talks was likely until Carter is reelected President or replaced by one of his rivals who would hopefully make a fresh start on the presently dormant negotiations.
Begin criticized the proposal mainly because Sadat did not consult either Israeli or United States officials before making the proposal public Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir said at the Cabinet meeting that there had been a negative re-action in Washington to Sadat’s new summit idea Shamir also reported that Alfred Atherton, the U.S. Ambassador to Egypt, and special U.S. Mideast envoy Sol Linowitz would be coming to the area in the next few weeks.
ELEMENTS IN SADAT’S LETTER
Although the content of the Sadat letter to Begin was not made public, information from Cairo indicated that the letter was sharply worded and that, in it, Sadat chided Begin for refusing to remove what Sadat considered were Israeli-made obstacles to peace.
In the letter, Sadat proposed the new summit meeting because he felt the negotiations had been made meaningless by the new Israeli law on the status of undivided Jerusalem. Sadat’s suggestion that the new summit be held after Nov. 4, the Egyptian President wrote, was mode out of courtesy to President Carter. Sadat also was understood to have complained about Israel’s continuing policy of establishing new settlements on the West Bank.
Sadat reportedly said in the letter that it would be best to hold a new summit “to stem these lingering differences before they jeopardize our mission” for Middle East peace.
The Cabinet also held a thorough discussion of the currently troubled Israeli relations with Egypt and the suspension of the autonomy talks, imposed by Sadat after the Knesset approved a law formally making undivided Jerusalem Israel’s capital. The Ministerial Advisory Committee was instructed to meet tomorrow to prepare the Israeli reply to Sadat’s proposal. Begin has already prepared a draft of his reply.
The Cabinet also discussed the anti-Begin campaign in Egyptian news media, with several ministers expressing dissatisfaction and annoy-once. One Minister reportedly said “we are giving back territory to the Egyptians and what we are getting in return are insulting caricatures of Israel’s Premier.”
COOL REACTION TO RUMANIAN INITIATIVE
Meanwhile, political circles in Jerusalem re-acted cooly to a report from Bucharest also proposing a new summit meeting, but this one a United Nations-sponsored international conference. The report from Bucharest, where Butros Ghali, Egypt’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, met for four days with Rumanian President Nicolae Ceausescu, indicated that the two leaders had discussed the possibility of such a UN-sponsored conference.
The sources here said “we did not know that our partners to the Camp David accords decided to change the forum of negotiations. “However, it was noted here that the joint statement from Bucharest referred to the idea of “considering” the option of a new Mideast conference and did not set out any specifics for the idea. The President of Rumania, the only Soviet-bloc country to maintain diplomatic relations with Israel, was scheduled to go today to Amman for a three-day visit and talks with Jordan’s King Hussein.
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.
