Cabinet Sets Guidelines for Disengagement Accord with Syria

The caretaker Cabinet convened this afternoon and met late into the night, wrestling with the major issues of an Israeli-Syrian disengagement accord on which firm policies must be established before U.S. Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger arrives here Thursday. Officials here do not seem to share Kissinger’s optimism that an agreement will be attained. The tendency of the government, therefore, is to stick to its previous policy which allows no withdrawals from any territory captured from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War.

According to reliable sources, Kissinger is expected to ask Israel to reverse that policy in the interests of a disengagement agreement. No final decisions are expected to be taken this evening and the Cabinet is expected to re-convene probably on Friday, after the initial round of talks with Kissinger. Today’s meeting was attended by Israel’s envoy to Washington, Ambassador Simcha Dinitz, who briefed the ministers on the latest developments in U.S.-Israeli relations, and Chief-of Staff Gen. Mordechai Gur who reported on the military situation on the Syrian front.

The Cabinet’s main task is to make policy decisions on five outstanding matters connected with an Israeli-Syrian separation of forces. The first of these is withdrawal from the Golan Heights town of Kuneitra which Israeli forces captured in June, 1967 and which Kissinger is expected to ask Israel to surrender to meet one of the conditions of Syrian President Hafez Assad for disengagement.

The second question concerns Israeli military positions on Mt. Hermon whose strategic 9200-foot peak has been the objective of bitter fighting between Israeli and Syrian forces for the past three weeks. The feeling here is that the government will not agree to withdraw its forces from Mt. Hermon as long as Syria continues to wage its war of attrition.

TERRORIST ACTIVITIES, POWS AMONG ISSUES

The third major problem is the nature of a buffer zone that would be established between Israeli and Syrian forces in the framework of disengagement. Israel wants the zone to be policed by units of the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) which has worked very well so far in the Sinai buffer zone separating Israeli and Egyptian forces. Syria objects to the presence of UN military units and insists that any buffer zone established on its front be confined to members of the UN Truce Observers Organization (UNTSO) which includes Soviet military personnel.

The fourth issue confronting the government is how negotiations with the Syrians will continue after Kissinger has left the region. On the Egyptian front last Jan., these talks were held at a UN checkpoint midway between the military lines of both sides. Here again, Damascus refuses to follow the Egyptian pattern and demands that the further talks be moved to Geneva where the two superpowers–U.S. and USSR–presumably would be looking over the shoulders of the negotiators.

The Israeli position, according to reliable reports, is that most concrete points of a disengagement accord should be concluded while Dr. Kissinger is in the region serving as an intermediary and the technical details worked out later in Geneva. This question is not expected to be decided, however, until Israel hears Kissinger’s report on his talks with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in Geneva yesterday.

The fifth major point to be taken up by the Cabinet concerns Israel’s approach to the Syrian demand that any separation of forces agreement must include a prior Israeli commitment to withdraw completely from the Golan Heights and all territories occupied in 1967.

There are, in addition, other issues such as an end to terrorist activities on the northern front and Israel’s absolute pre-requisite that any agreement with Syria must include a speedy exchange of all POWs. According to reliable sources, the government is aware that Kissinger expects Israel to make the “first move” toward an agreement with Syria and in that respect will try to persuade Israel to give up Kuneitra.