Carter Reaffirms Pledge of Strong, Continuing U.S. Support for Israel

President Carter gave another pledge of strong and continuing American support for Israel at the working dinner at the White House for Israeli Premier Yitzhak Rabin last night. Speaking of their earlier meeting yesterday morning. Carter said he and Rabin discussed “the possibilities in 1977 of helping to carve out for Israel and for Israel’s neighbors the time of permanent peace, of mutual respect, trade, better understanding and of the acceptance of differences that in the past have been devisive.”

The President, in welcoming Rabin to the White House yesterday morning, said the United States was exploring “some common ground” with the leaders of the Middle East so that “Israel might have defensible borders.” Within hours, Presidential News Secretary Jody Powell told reporters that the phrase defensible borders “should not be construed as any sort of departure or breaking of new ground.” He said the President was “thinking in broad terms as always” and was referring to the U.S. position taken prior to the Carter Administration. (See related story P. 3.)

Asked to define defensible borders, Powell said he wished to avoid “a narrow definition” in geographic terms. “Secure borders,” he said, “must include a broad range of considerations,” including “the overall political climate” and “the obligations of the countries of the Middle East.”

Carter’s reference to defensible borders was not the first time that phrase has been used by an American President. Nixon used that phrase in a television interview in July, 1970. In the recent past, however, U.S. officials have usually spoken of Israel’s need for “secure and recognized boundaries,” which is the language of Security Council Resolution 242.

IMPORTANCE OF SECURITY

Speaking at the working dinner last night, Carter said: “We understand very clearly in our own country–strong and powerful and secure–that security is important, and is the essence of what Israel can expect from us and from the rest of the world–a recognition of their existence now and in the future.”

Later, in his toast to Rabin, Carter recalled that President Truman recognized Israel 12 minutes after the Jewish State came into existence 29 years ago. “And that recognition and that friendship has never wavered.” Carter added. “As long as I have any influence on our own government, as long as these other gentlemen from our government (the American officials at the dinner) have any influence, that recognition and that strength and that friendship and that sense of mutual purpose will never waver.”

Carter declared further, “Many people in our own country have looked on our relationship with Israel as one of support and one of friendship that was to Israel’s benefit. I have never looked on it that way. I consider it to be an equal partnership that has derived for our country and for the cause of freedom tremendous benefits for us and this is a time of sharing of plans for the future.”

NEW BEGINNING SEEN

In his response to the President, Rabin said that “the unique relationship that has been developed between our two countries” results from their “spirit of freedom, the belief in democracy and the permanent search for peace and happiness.” He said “your initiative” to start the talks with the Middle Eastern leaders “this time will allow us to build the kind of thinking and I hope also action with coordination with other leaders of the area that will bring about an end to a long futile war and will start a new beginning for Israel and for all the countries in the area.”

Rabin also said that this is the first time a Premier of Israel “has come to the United States without a shopping list, without the need to make an imminent decision because of the pressure of events.” In keeping with the scale down formal programming, the dinner was limited by the President to 35 guests. They included the Israeli visitors and Embassy officials, the President’s principal aides and prominent members of Congress.

Earlier yesterday, Rabin met with Defense Secretary Harold Brown for more than an hour at Blair House following a long working lunch with Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, On leaving the meeting, Brown described it as “useful and productive.”