Eban: Israel Has Made Enormous Concessions; Now Up to Egypt to Be Moderate, Conciliatory

Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban contended yesterday that his government had made “enormous concessions” for peace in the Middle East and that it was up to Egypt to be “moderate” and “conciliatory.” Interviewed on ABC-TV and Radio’s “Issues and Answers,” Eban reiterated that Israel was ready to come to agreement on the various points of dispute between the two sides, but only as the result of Egyptian-Israeli negotiations. “We reject nothing a priori,” he noted, including international guarantees and dominion over the Golan Heights. Sharm el-sheikh and even Jerusalem. But he indicated that those three areas were the most important of the territorial issues to Israel, and he expressed “skepticism” over international guarantees in view of what he called their repeated failures in the past.

It was “absurd” for Egypt, Eban said, to conduct peace efforts by “remote control.” The “central issue” he said, was the fifth of the five points he proposed in the United Nations General Assembly last Thursday–direct talks, with mediation, between him and Egyptian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Riad while both are here this month for the Assembly. “They lose nothing and gain much” from negotiations, Eban said of the Egyptians. Eban stressed, as he has before, that the “realistic view” of the UN that he held was that its “grotesque arithmetical imbalance” made it ineffective, and even an obstacle, in the search for peace.

DISCOUNTS REPORTS OF SOVIET CONTACTS

The Foreign Minister also said he was “not very impressed with President (Anwar) Sadat’s deadlines,” the Egyptian leader having said that there will be war by year’s end unless Israel agrees by then to quit all the occupied Arab areas. That deadline is unrealistic, Eban said, because the Egyptians know “they wouldn’t win”; Egypt is hurting too much internally, and the big powers don’t want a resumption of the shooting war. Eban contended that a resumption of American jet shipments to Israel was required to maintain the Mideast military balance. “We can’t conceal our disquiet about the time that passes” without such a resumption, he said.

Eban stated that the United States has not linked continuation of jet deliveries to Israeli withdrawal. Reminded by an interview that Sadat was due to visit Moscow soon, Eban observed: “If he’s going to Moscow he’s not going to come back empty-handed”–an allusion to increased Soviet arms shipments to Egypt. Eban discounted reports of Soviet-Israeli diplomatic contacts as “gropings” by the Soviets that were not “serious” attempts to renew formal relations. The Kremlin, he said, does not have the “courage” to discuss the matter seriously. Of the several reported unofficial meetings, he remarked: “The diplomatic cocktail party is one of the advanced forms of man’s inhumanity to man.”