Baker Says Reagan Has Agreed to Delay Until Fall Submitting to Congress Arms Package to the Saudis

— Sen. majority leader Howard Baker (R. Tenn.) announced today that President Reagan has agreed to delay submission of the Administration’s proposed multibillion dollar arms package sale to Saudi Arabia until at least the fall in order to allow Congress to have some “input” into the proposal.

Baker, who made the announcement while answering questions on CBS-TV’s “Face the Nation” program, predicted that the arms proposal when finally adopted would be “significantly different” than the package now being mentioned. He said that the way the package is now becoming publicized, including the sale of five AWACS and enhancement equipment for the 62 F-15 jet fighters, it would have a “hard time passing Congress.”

Baker suggested that there are many ways that the AWACS sale could be changed. He listed some as including joint American and Saudi crews and joint processing of data, or American control of the final end product. He said that what the consultations with Congress would try to achieve would be to make the final package “more acceptable to our friends in Israel and still acceptable to our friends in Saudi Arabia.”

The Senator would not indicate how he would vote for the present package. But he said as the “President’s point man” in the Senate, he would be inclined to support major Administration proposals unless it conflicted with his conscience.

SAYS CONGRESS WILL NOT LIKE PRESSURE

Baker projected that Congress will “not like” the heavy pressure it is expected to undergo from friends of Israel who are opposed to the sale of the arms package to the Saudis. But he stressed that the “Israel lobby” is made up of “good people” who are “seriously concerned about the security and survival of Israel.” However, he noted, Congress must adopt a package that “serves America’s best interests.”

The solon conceded that Israel has legitimate concerns about the arms sale. But he added that “Israel never had a better friend perhaps in the White House than it has with President Reagan.” He said that Reagan is concerned with the security of Israel but is also concerned with the security of the region that extends beyond Israel.

Baker added that he would like to see an arms package developed that keeps in mind the Israeli and Saudi arms balance and that advances the case in the Middle East, including the Camp David process. He added that he would like to see the Saudis involved in the Camp David process.

Baker said he was “disappointed” in statements by Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, Saudi Arabia’s oil minister, who told a Foreign Policy Association meeting in New York last Thursday that Israel was a greater menace to the security of the Middle East than the Soviet Union. The Senator said Yamani’s view is contrary to the Reagan Administration’s view that Israel and Saudi Arabia must join the U.S. in recognizing that the Soviet Union is the main threat in the Mideast.

JEWISH LEADERS ASSAIL YAMANI

Meanwhile, Jewish organizations actively opposing the Administration’s plan to provide advanced weaponry to Saudi Arabia, directed their attacks over the weekend to Yamani’s speech.

Daniel Thursz, executive vice president of B’nai B’rith International, said “The United States looks to Saudi Arabia to help deter further Soviet encroachment into the Middle East, but it is clear from Yamani’s statement that Saudi Arabia is looking in the opposite direction, to Israel and her ultimate destruction.”

He said Yamani’s remark that Israel is a greater menace than the Soviets “is a figment of Saudi imagination.” He also challenged Yamani’s contention that Israel and its policies invite Soviet influence into the region. “This is the assailant blaming the victim for his life of crime,” the B’nai B’rith official said.

Henry Siegman, executive director of the American Jewish Congress, said “The declaration by Mr. Yamani that Israel presents ‘an actual danger obviously worse than the potential danger of Communism’ destroys the credibility of the assurances offered by the Reagan Administration that those weapons will not be a threat to the security of Israel. Clearly, the Saudis will use whatever weapons we supply them with to deal with the threat they perceive as by far greater. It would be both dangerous and dishonest to pretend otherwise.”

Rabbi Alexander Schindler, president of the (Reform) Union of American Hebrew Congregations, said Yamani’s statement “finally reveals the truth about his country’s friendship with America–and the uses to which it intends putting the AWACS planes and F-15 fighter-bombers which this Administration wants to sell to the (Saudi) royal family.”

Nathan Perlmutter, national director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, said that “Yamani’s remarks… make the best case yet for not sending either AWACS or enhanced F-15s to

Saudi Arabia. Defense Department allegations to the contrary notwithstanding, the illusion that Saudi Arabia is interested in these planes to defend itself against the Soviet Union was erased by Yamani’s candid admissions. To Saudi Arabia, it is Israel, not the Soviet Union, that is the perceived danger.”

Edgar Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress, declared that “For Sheikh Yamani to brand Israel as an ‘aggressor’ after it has defended itself against Arab forces in four unsuccessful attempts to destroy Israel, is almost as Aesopian as Sheikh Yamani’s assertion equating ‘international Communism and Israel’ as the two leading threats to peace in the Middle East. And to say that ‘Israel’s policies are at one with Russian policies’ is an utter debasement of political distinction.”

Ivan Novick, president of the Zionist Organization of America, said that “The views expressed by Sheikh Yamani are not only an indictment of Saudi Arabia’s anti-American position, but they tear to shreds any semblance of so-called ‘moderation.’ Thus the sale of AWACS and advanced additional equipment to Saudi Arabia for F-15s encourages the enemies of our strategic ally, Israel, and therefore is not in the interest of the United States.”

LEGISLATORS OPPOSE SALE OF AWACS

Rep. Jonathan Bingham, (D. N. Y.) a ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, urged the Administration to withdraw the proposed sale of AWACS to Saudi Arabia in the wake of Yamani’s statement.

“The Administration has been assuring us that the Saudis only need the AWACS for protection against the Soviets and pro-Soviet Mideast regimes,” Bingham said, “but Yamani has made it clear that the AWACS are to be used against Israel. Accordingly, I see no way that the Congress can approve this sale.”

Rep. Charles Schumer (D. N. Y.) charged that the Reagan Administration has postponed action in Congress on AWAC legislation “not because of the Israeli elections (June 30) but because the President can now begin twisting arms.’ He told Victor Riesel on the latter’s WEVD radio weekly interview show that if a vote was taken today in both houses of Congress the AWAC sale would be doomed.

He noted that “even legislators who are not pro-Israel are asking each other why a plane we have so zealously guarded and which the Soviets would also love to get their hands on is being sold to the Saudis.” Schumer added that the sale was “a security breach of the greatest order.” But he also faulted Israel for “going along with the F-15 sale because by giving the inch the State Department gave five feet or five AWACS.”