Eban: Neither Israel nor U.S. Has Adopted Any Final Position on Interim Accord

Neither Israel nor the United States has adopted any final position on terms for an interim arrangement to reopen the Suez Canal. This fact was stressed last night by Foreign Minister Abba Eban on a radio interview and was elaborated on by very reliable sources following today’s Cabinet meeting. The sources said that the note on the subject which Premier Golda Meir handed U.S. Ambassador Walworth Barbour two weeks ago for conveyance to Washington and subsequently to Cairo, was not Israel’s final word and may be amended in light of the forthcoming talks with Secretary of State William P. Rogers who is expected here Thursday. The sources said Barbour stressed that his government has not rejected all of the points in Israel’s position. On the contrary, the U.S. has accepted some of them, expressed disagreement with others and asked for clarification of still others, the sources said. Among the points that the U.S. accepts unequivocally is Israel’s key demand that no Egyptian or Soviet troops may cross the Suez Canal to occupy areas which Israel may evacuate as part of an interim settlement. Appearing on the weekly radio news magazine, Eban said substantially the same thing, disclosing for the first time that there has been an official American response to Israel’s proposals for a partial settlement.

Eban said that Washington was vague on certain points that are vital to Israel and require exact definitions. One of these was what the U.S. would want to and would be able to do to reassure Israel that acceptance of an agreement to reopen the Suez Canal would not result in Egyptian or Soviet forces crossing the waterway. Eban emphatically rejected reports that Israel was embroiled in a political confrontation with the U.S. He said that even if there are disagreements, the term confrontation should be reserved only for a situation such as prevailed in 1957 when the U.S. and the Soviet Union jointly demanded total Israeli evacuation from Sinai without an agreement. Eban said his government has defined its position as a demand for “an unlimited cease-fire and absolute certainty that the fighting will not be resumed.” He said the official position of the Israel government was that abrogation of the state of belligerency had far broader legal and political implications than simple non-shooting and therefore did not belong to the context of a partial and limited arrangement. The Foreign Minister stressed that this was the government’s position and not necessarily his personal view.