Former Secretary of State Alexander Haig has denounced the Middle East policy carried on by the Reagan Administration since his abrupt resignation last year.
He told a press conference, after speaking here at a dinner honoring Montreal business leader Thomas Hecht that the United States “should have learned” to deal with Israel, as a democracy, “through quiet diplomacy and not by rushing to the front pages of the newspapers or on prime-time TV to condemn an allied nation.”
Haig charged that this is what “our administration did through thoughtless statements by the Secretary of Defense, ” whom he did not name, “by face-less White House staffers and a host of others in what remains as yet an uncoordinated structure” of government.
He made his remarks in reply to a question by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency as to why the Reagan Administration condemned Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in June, 1982, while it now urges strategic cooperation on Israel, with the hope of extricating the marines from Lebanon.
‘PROFOUND DIFFERENCES’ WITH REAGAN POLICY
Haig, answering other questions, said he had “profound differences” with the Reagan Administration’s Mideast policies. He said Israel and the moderate Arab countries “will find their interests better served by a better relationship between us and Israel. If we ourselves suggest that we cannot influence Israel’s policies, we shall become irrelevant to Arab states and make them look elsewhere.” He said an example of that was “Egypt’s intention to reopen its embassy in Moscow.”
He declared that “as one who has conducted negotiations for strategic cooperation in the Middle East because of the external threat to the region from an expansionist Soviet Union, I can say that Israel can cope militarily with its own forces. All that it needs is economic aid.”
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.
