Republican presidential candidate Alexander Haig told Jewish leaders Wednesday he was “appalled” that the Reagan administration did not link arms agreements with Soviet concessions on Jewish emigration and what he called Soviet intervention in Nicaragua.
“Linkage enabled us in East-West relations to insist that the Russian government does not have the ability to pick the area which meets their needs while leaving untended violations of human rights and aggressiveness in the developing world,” he said.
Haig’s criticism of administration policy during the recent superpower summit came at a forum sponsored by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
The former secretary of state under Reagan also discounted a Soviet role in the Middle East peace process, saying that “any conference that gives the Soviet Union, the PLO or Syria a veto role is a contradiction and will not bring peace.”
In addition, Haig said he supported Congress’ decision to close the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Observer Mission at the United Nations.
“While we should be careful to recognize that there are elements of the PLO which aren’t terrorist. . . dollars are raised (for the PLO) which support international terrorism, and the judgment was right to close the office,” he said.
Haig spoke briefly without notes before taking questions from the audience, primarily on foreign policy.
Besides serving under Reagan, Haig was supreme allied commander of NATO and a White House chief of staff under President Nixon.
While avowing that as a veteran of two wars he would avoid the use of military power at all costs, Haig said that responding to terrorism with force can be “morally right.”
On the other hand, he said the reflagging of Kuwaiti oil tankers and the U.S. Navy’s role in the Persian Gulf “may jeopardize the very outcome we seek” — that is, countering the influence of the Soviet Union among the Gulf states.
Haig called Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev “articulate, educated, eloquent” and “agile and imaginative” and, as a result, “perhaps the most dangerous Soviet leader since Lenin.”
“We had better have a leader who’s had exposure to the Soviet system,” he warned, hinting that he had just the leader in mind.
Although Haig has placed as high as third in some presidential polls, the political gadfly admitted he is not being taken seriously as a candidate by the Republican Party leadership.
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