The Carter Administration differed today with Democratic Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd of West Virginia who warned yesterday that the new Congress “will be reluctant to increase Israeli aid while Israel continues to spend on the proliferation of new settlements” on the West Bank. “The Senator was speaking as Senator Byrd,” the State Department’s chief spokesman Hodding Carter said when asked about Byrd’s remarks following his return from visits to Israel and Egypt as an emissary of President Carter.
The spokesman said that while Byrd made a report to the President on his trip, “I assume” that he stopped being the President’s envoy “when he left the Middle East.” He said that he would not “interpret” Byrd’s remarks. However, he stressed that “we have never made linkage” between aid to Israel and Israel’s settlements in the occupied territories. Asked if aid to Israel was conditional on the settlements issue, Carter replied, “No.”
He repeated that there is “no linkage” and said the aid issue “is not in that direction at all.” He added, “It is fundamental that Israel’s security needs stand in and of themselves and are approached in and of themselves. Our commitment to those needs is a commitment we have undertaken for three decades–at least to its security–and we would not abandon that overall commitment.”
Asked about Israel’s establishment of settlements in the occupied territories and its security requirements, Carter noted that Secretary of State Cyrus Vance has spoken on the settlements which the U.S. regards as illegal. But, he added, “there is nothing new on Israel’s settlements nor on Israel’s security needs in that whole area, which are not necessarily the same thing at all.”
Regarding the matter of U.S. support to Israel for the construction of new bases in the Negev to replace those to be abandoned when Israel withdraws from Sinai, Carter said the subject was continuing “in our internal discussions.” He referred to the letters exchanged between Defense Secretary Harold Brown and Israeli Defense Minister Ezer Weizman after the Camp David conference. He also reported that the American team that visited Israel on that matter has returned to Washington.
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