Anger Mounting in Congress over U.S. Sale of Planes to Arabs and Israel

The Carter Administration is facing rising anger and concern in Congress over its proposed sales “package” of war planes to Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Formidable opposition to both the timing and content of the $4.8 billion deal was evident in both Houses during the past few days although formal presentation of the package to Congress is not expected before early April.

Secretary of State Cyrus Vance is expected to be questioned sharply when he appears before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Thursday to testify on the Administration’s plans. Vance strongly defended the deal at a hearing last Friday before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations which scrutinizes all U.S. foreign assistance funds.

Asked by subcommittee chairman Clarence Long (D.Md.) what the Administration would do if Congress approved the allotments of aircraft for Israel but not for Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Vance replied: “I think the only thing one could do under such circumstances would be to withdraw the package if all the pieces were not in it.”

The Administration has proposed to sell Israel 15 F-15 fighters, said to be the best aircraft of its type in the world, and 75 of the less advanced F-16s. For Saudi Arabia it proposed 60 F-15s and for Egypt 50 of the less sophisticated F-5Es. The latter would be the first “lethal” weapons ever sold to Egypt by the U.S.

STRONG ATTACK BY STONE

Sen. Richard Stone (D.Fla.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, claimed yesterday that Carter’s explanation for supplying F-15s to Saudi Arabia “does not seem to square with the facts we are getting from other sources.” He said “the President is being misadvised and the information being given” to Congress does not “jibe” with information from some Administration “experts” on the U.S. supply of Hawk anti-aircraft missiles and their placement at the Saudi air base at Tabuk within short flying distance of Israel.

“At a time when all moderate parties are reaching toward peace, it is paradoxical that either through insufficient information or faulty briefings, the President and the Congress might be led to make an ill-advised decision about these arms sales,” Stone said. As an example of misinformation, he cited Carter’s remark that Saudi Arabia never participated in Arab wars with Israel when in fact Saudi Arabia did send a brigade of soldiers to the Golan Heights to fight Israelis in the 1973 war and they remained until 1976.

However, he said, “the more important question is why should the U.S. assist or possibly induce Saudi Arabia to mount an offensive risk to Israel now through the Hawk missiles stationed at Tabuk and the F-15s? If Saudi Arabia has not, in the past, been deemed a substantial offensive threat to Israel, why should the United States upset that concept now?”

The Senator also recalled that in 1974 the U.S. agreed to provide Saudi Arabia with F-5E aircraft that were then generally used as a defensive weapon. But the Pentagon sold Saudi Arabia F-5Es that were modified to be capable of carrying sophisticated offensive weapons, he said, observing that, “this leads me to question whether” the Congress or the President is getting “all the facts.”

Another sharp attack on the Administration’s package proposal was delivered by Rep. Benjamin Rosenthal (D.NY), Deputy Majority Whip last Thursday. He told the House that the proposed sales came “at a critical time and in a way that can only encourage a hardening of positions on both sides” in the current Mideast peace process. He claimed that if the package goes through as the Administration proposes, Saudi Arabia would have a 3-2 advantage over Israel in F-15s by 1981.

Long, in a withering blast at the Administration’s proposed planes sale package, told Vance at the hearing last Friday that “there is no way you can convince me you can somehow get peace in a section of the world in which you are pumping vast arms. We have become the merchants of slaughter in this world.”