President Carter said today that he was “very, very disappointed” with the Israeli Cabinet’s response to the American questions on the future of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and also appeared critical of Israel’s rejection yesterday of Egyptian proposals for those territories before they were even formally presented.
Carter made those remarks when asked at a press conference late this afternoon for his assessment of Middle East peace prospects. He said his experience left him unsurprised by “temporary setbacks” and stressed that “our commitment to the policy of seeking a comprehensive and effective peace in the Middle East is constant and very dedicated. We will not back off on this,” he said.
The Israeli Cabinet yesterday rejected “unreservedly” an Egyptian proposal that the West Bank be returned to Jordan and the Gaza Strip to Egypt pending negotiations on the final disposition of those territories and on Israel’s security problems. The proposal appeared in the semi-official Cairo daily Al Ahram but was not made officially by the Egyptian government. Carter stressed that point. He said that when the Egyptian proposals are finally formulated and given to the U.S. they will be conveyed to Israel and both sides would have proposals on the table. “I should hope at that point we could make real progress in searching out common ground on which they might stand and alleviating the differences that still remain,” he said. He said he could not predict how long that would take.
The State Department declined to comment today on Israel’s rejection of the unofficial Egyptian proposal and would not discuss whether the Egyptian ideas were “a concrete proposal” or, as Israel contends, “a pre-condition” for resuming peace talks. The Department’s chief spokesman, Hodding Carter, said that “Our interest is in getting the parties back into direct negotiations on general approaches to peace in the area and what the agenda will be.”
President Carter said that when he rebuked Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev, Fidel Castro of Cuba and “special interest groups” at home for their criticism of National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski last week, he had no particular special interest group in mind. He had been asked if he had been referring to such groups as American Jews who have been critical of Brzezinski.
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