Yehuda Blum, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, charged last night that the eight-point plan proposed by Crown Prince Fahd of Saudi Arabia was neither a “peace” plan nor the Saudis own proposal.
“There is every indication that these eight points were drafted, if not by, certainly with the cooperation of the PLO,” he told some 400 members of the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) attending the organization’s 1981 Joint Program Institute here.
Blum said the “fingerprints” of the PLO are all over the Fahd plan, which he charged was aimed at bringing about an end to U.S. support of Israel.
He declared that the plan was designed for the liquidation of Israel. He said that it calls for a Palestinian state controlled by the PLO which he said in turn would be a Soviet (satellite), a sort of “mini-Afghanistan.”
The NCJW members had attended a briefing at the State Department earlier yesterday in which they were told that the Fahd plan implies Saudi recognition of Israel. Blum rejected this view and declared that it was an “outrage that such excitement can be aroused” in the U.S. and elsewhere by the Saudis implying Israel’s right to exist. “Israel has no need for recognition by Saudi Arabia of its right to exist” or by “any other country,” Blum declared.
He praised the relationship that has developed between the Israeli Mission to the UN and the U.S. delegation headed by Jeane Kirkpatrick, the U.S. Ambassador to the UN. He said he was pleased by the “favorable developments of the last few months” in which the U.S., sometimes standing alone, has supported Israel against anti-Israel resolutions in the General Assembly.
WARNS AGAINST ‘SPIRIT OF INTOLERANCE’
At today’s concluding luncheon session, Sen. Bob Packwood (R. Ore.) warned against what he called a “spirit of intolerance” by people who believe “God speaks to them” on social issues, such as busing, equality of opportunity, school prayer and abortion.
“God did not speak to any one of us and make us perpetually right,” he said as he received the NCJW’s Social Action Award. Packwood said he would fight to oppose those who want to impose their “idea of how we should pray, to whom we should pray or whether we should pray at all on the American people.” He said it is “not the government’s business” how Americans pray or whether they pray at all.
In receiving the award from Shirley Leviton, NCJW president, Packwood noted that Mrs. Leviton was invited to the White House this afternoon to meet President Reagan as part of a delegation of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. He quipped that she is possibly in better favor with the President than he is and asked Mrs. Leviton to tell the President, “I’m still around.”
The Republican Senator was praised by Mrs. Leviton for leading the fight against the sale of AWACS reconnaissance aircraft and other advanced weaponry to Saudi Arabia. Last September, Packwood incurred the President’s personal displeasure when he refused an appeal from Reagan to stop gathering Senators’ names for his resolution opposing the $8.5 billion arms sale.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
