Begin Ready for Tripartite Summit

Premier Menachem Begin said tonight that he was ready to attend a tripartite summit meeting with President. Carter and President Anwar Sadat of Egypt in Washington to restore the peacemaking process and that he hoped Secretary of State Cyrus Vance would succeed in persuading Sadat to resume the political talks broken off by Sadat yesterday. Begin made his remarks at a joint press conference with Vance who will go to Cairo tomorrow to meet Sadat.

The Premier said there had been no discussion of a possible summit meeting in Washington. He stated that the Cabinet would consider Sadat’s offer to resume the joint military talks in Cairo and that the decision of whether to go ahead would be based on the outcome of the Vance-Sadat meeting and an analysis of Sadat’s speech Saturday to the Egyptian parliament.

Both Vance and Begin described their talks here today as “good” or “very good.” Vance said he still did not know why Sadat recalled the Egyptian delegation from Jerusalem. He said he hoped to find out tomorrow.

Begin and Vance sought to put as hopeful a gloss as possible on the current events, with Vance recalling pointedly that Egypt’s Foreign Minister Mohammed Ibrahim Kaamel had said the talks had not been broken off. Vance himself–as the night before–repeated insistently that Kaamel had returned to “report” to Sadat or to “hold consultations” in Cairo.

But some top policymakers in Jerusalem sounded not nearly so optimistic in private conversations. They said they could not see much hope of the Jerusalem committee resuming in its present format. Perhaps, they added, Vance could come up with some new framework. But–more significantly–they felt that Sadat was in deadly earnest when he said that without a substantive change in Israel’s policies there could be no continuation of the peace talks. (By David Landau)