Likud Cabinet Minister Moshe Arens warned today that Israeli Premier Shimon Peres cannot agree to an international conference for Middle East peace talks as long as Likud is opposed.
Israel’s national unity government” cannot go into an international conference unless both Likud and Labor agree to it,” Arens said in an interview here with reporters from the Jewish media. “Peres cannot do it on his own.”
Arens, a Minister-Without-Portfolio, also warned that if the national unity government fell apart it would be the “end” of Israel’s economic plan which he said has been achieving “some results.”
He explained that because of the almost “Draconian” measures that had to be taken, “no government except for a national unity government could have initiated such a program.” He said there have been “drastic cuts in consumption” in both the public and private sectors which has reduced the rate of inflation from 400 percent ayear to 40 percent. He added, this is “just a first step and we have got to maintain that direction.”
Arens, who was Ambassador to the United States and Defense Minister under the former Likud government, is in the U.S. for speaking engagements. He has been meeting with some U.S. officials while in Washington and met yesterday with Deputy Secretary of State John Whitehead.
On the demand of King Hussein of Jordan for an international conference, Arens said Likud would support Peres’ original statement that he would accept a United Nations Security Council resolution endorsing direct negotiations between Israel and Jordan. But Arens said Peres has moved away from this position and is now willing to accept an international conference.
Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin said here last week that if Hussein drops his demand that “declared members” of the Palestine Liberation Organization be included in negotiations, the “obstacle” of an international forum could be overcome.
But Arens stressed today that Israel “should not abandon” its long-held position that it wants “direct negotiations between Israel and Jordan without any participation of the Soviet Union.”
He noted that it was the USSR that broke diplomatic relations with Israel and while Israel would be “happy” if the Soviet Union decided to restore them, “We don’t feel we have to pay any kind of price for that. Certainly not the price of letting the Soviet Union into negotiations dealing with the very future of the State of Israel.”
Stessing Likud’s opposition to an international conference, Arens noted that there is already a precedent for the government being divided on a major issue. He said Peres wanted to accept Egypt’s demand that the Taba controversy be placed in arbitration and Likud demanded that conciliation be continued. He said the issue went to the Inner Cabinet where the vote was 5-5, evenly divided between Labor and Likud and that’s where it now stands.
Arens said he would like to see the coalition government run its full course, although he did not know whether it would. But he noted that in the recent Cabinet crisis over Ariel Sharon, Peres found that the religious parties would not go along with him in creating a minority government.
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