Begin Meets with U.S. Envoy for Preliminary Talks on Carter Meeting

Premier Menachem Begin met with U.S. Ambassador Samuel Lewis here today for preliminary discussions on the meeting set with President Carter next month. No precise date for the meeting has yet been “announced in Jerusalem.

Officials here had expected a summit initiative from Carter sooner or later. But the President’s invitation had not been expected to come exactly when and how it did, and it took Jerusalem off guard.

Interior Minister Yosef Burg, Israel’s chief negotiator in the autonomy talks, has been consulting with Egyptian Prime Minister Mustapha Khalil and U.S. special Ambassador Sol Linowitz on ways to speed up the talks; but his efforts have now been overshadowed by the forthcoming talks in Washington. Linowitz’s visit here and to Egypt next week is seen as preparatory to the Washington talks.

There is some apprehension apparent in government circles here in the force of the Carter-Begin meeting. U.S. policy on autonomy, it is felt, is a good deal closer to the Egyptian outlook than to that of Israel. Therefore, the President will lean on Begin harder than he will on Sadat, it is expected here.

Carter’s success so for in the U.S. Presidential primaries will also give him freedom to press Israel for concessions, it is felt here. The invitation to Begin and Sodat is expected to boost the President’s standing among the Jewish Democrats in advance of the important New York primary next week.

Begin is not expected to take with him Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir or Defense Minister Ezer Weizman, although the arrangements and still tentative and could change.

FACTORS COMPLICATING THE SITUATION

Complicating Israel-U.S. relations at this delicate juncture, in addition to the stilt undecided issue of Hebron, is a report from Yediot Achronot’s Washington correspondent today not denied here, that Israel intends to ask the U.S. to begin implementing its undertaking to supply Israel with oil for a period of 15 years.

The undertaking was part of the bilateral agreements accompanying the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. It provides that the U.S. most respond if Israel cannot obtain the oil it needs through regular channels. Yediot Ach#onot, citing U.S. government sources for the story, said Washington was hoping Israel would think again and would not press for the oil-supply clause to go into effect since it might well be unpopular with American public opinion. U.S. sources were quoted in the story as saying that Israel could in fact cover its oil needs without difficulty from Mexico, Egypt and on the spot market.