Confirm Vance Will Visit Israel and Four Neighboring Arab States

Cyrus Vance, who will become Secretary of State on Thursday, will visit Israel and four neighboring Arab states at the end of February or early in March in the first of two steps the Carter Administration is planning to deal with the Middle East situation, it was confirmed here today.

The second step, according to informed sources, will be President Carter’s meetings in Washington, beginning early next spring, with leaders of the five countries that Vance will visit. State Department officials declined to discuss Vance’s trip today inasmuch as he will not take office until after Carter’s inauguration. But they acknowledged that the trip would take place within a month to six weeks and that Vance will visit Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel, presumably in that order, to assess prospects for new negotiations leading to an Arab-Israeli settlement.

Reports of the Vance trip followed the Secretary of State-designate’s meetings here with the Ambassadors of the four Arab countries at the State Department and a conversation he had with Israeli Ambassador Simcha Dinitz last Friday. The “crash diplomatic venture,” as one source described it, was prompted only partly by the Arab “peace offensive.” Officials here indicated that the primary consideration was Vance’s assessment of the general situation in the Middle East.

Premier Yitzhak Rabin of Israel is reported to have been invited to Washington in late March to become the first Middle East leader to meet with Carter. His visit would take place about six weeks before Israel’s general elections scheduled for May 17. Sources here said that in the event that Israel’s Labor Party decides at its convention next month to replace Rabin with Defense Minister Shimon Peres, both Peres and Rabin would be invited to come to Washington in March.

The Israeli visit will be followed in April with visits by President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Crown Prince Fahd Ibn Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia. King Hussein of Jordan is said to have tentatively accepted an invitation to visit Washington early in May. So far. President Hafez Assad, of Syria, is reported to have declined to visit Washington but he is said to have agreed to send a top aide to see Carter in the event he himself does not come.

ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS NAMED

Meanwhile Vance announced officially today that Alfred L. Atherton Jr. will remain as Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs. Vance also named Hodding Carter, editor and associate publisher of the Delta Democrat-Times of Greenville, Miss., to be the new State Department spokesman. He will replace Robert Funseth.

The State Department said that Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger will bid a formal fare well to his assistants and staff tomorrow and will leave Undersecretary of State Philip Habib as Acting Secretary for the brief period until Vance is inaugurated Thursday. Kissinger will spend several days in New York and will vacation until about March 1. The Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies disclosed that Kissinger will become affiliated with Georgetown University and will lecture at the Foreign Service School there. He will also work on a book.