Assad Sees Israeli Pullback from All Post-1967 Territory

President Hafez Assad of Syria told Americans yesterday that what he believes Syria has gained in its disengagement agreement with Israel is a three-stage movement by which Israel will surrender all the Arab territory it occupied in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Interviewed from Damascus on the ABC television program “Issues and Answers,” Assad said that disengagement “constitutes a step which should lead to the next stage and this stage in turn should lead to the full withdrawal of Israel from our occupied territories and to the restoration of the national rights of the Arab people of Palestine.”

Asked if he had any assurances from Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger on any agreement with the Israelis, the Syrian President replied that he could not say “in the full sense of the word that there are any such guarantees” from the U.S. “or any other foreign party.”

Sen. Henry M. Jackson (D.. Wash.), appearing on the CBS television program “Face the Nation” yesterday, warned that the “heavy Soviet presence in Syria” makes the Syrian-Israeli disengagement accord “very fragile.” The Russians added to their presence continuously even while the disengagement agreement was taking place, he said.

Sen. Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, the Senate Republican Minority Leader, described the Israeli disengagement agreements with Syria and Egypt as among “the great diplomatic triumphs in more than 25 years.” Speaking at an Israel Bonds dinner in Omaha, Saturday night, Scott praised Kissinger’s initiative as “a very important first step” toward a lasting peace in the Middle East. He warned, however, that “monumental problems lie ahead due to intense hostility, generations old” and that “further agreements will not be reached easily.” (By Joseph Polakoff)