Ebon Appointed As Chief Representative at Peace Talks, Tekoah As Alternate

The Government decided today to appoint Foreign Minister Abba Eban as its representative at the peace talks with Egypt and Jordan under the auspices of Dr. Gunnar V. Jarring. At the same time the government appointed Israel’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Yosef Tekoah, as Mr. Eban’s alternate at the talks. This seems to have been a way out of a difficult dilemma, the government making a compromise with itself, as it were. It had earlier indicated that it regarded representation at the level of Foreign Ministers as the only effective one. Dr. Jarring had stated that he shared this view. However, this ran counter to the wishes of the Arabs, who are interested in the lowest possible and least conspicuous level of representation. The United States, meanwhile, has been pressing for an early beginning of the talks, so the expected lengthy bargaining over the level of representation became impossible. That the formula devised today seems to be a way out of this dilemma is seen in the remark of a senior official in the Foreign Ministry here who said in answer to a question: “I do not know of any travel plans of Mr. Eban’s prior to the beginning of the United Nations General Assembly” on Sept. 15. Government spokesman Michael Arnon, who announced the decision today, refused to add a single word of amplification. Israel has now done all it was supposed to do to make the opening of the talks possible. The next step is up to Dr. Jarring. Israel has indicated that with regard to the venue of the talks it would prefer a city other than New York but would accept Dr. Jarring’s choice.

The government today held a five-and-a-half-hour session devoted to a “discussion of security and political affairs.” Chief of Staff Gen. Haim Bar Lev and Ambassador to the U.S. Yitzhak Rabin, now on home leave, were present. The meeting was defined as a session of the cabinet’s Defense Committee, which precludes publication of anything not officially announced. In a radio interview yesterday, Ambassador Rabin said that American-Israeli relations were “a friendship with liability” and that Israel should not let herself be influenced by American displeasure over her charges of Egyptian truce violations. “Once the Israeli government has made up its mind,” he said, “it should adhere to its declared policy.” The U.S., as the initiator of the standstill cease-fire, should take a firm position on the violation charges, and Israel has the right to demand that it do so, Gen. Rabin asserted. But while acknowledging policy differences between the two countries, he reiterated his remark of last Tuesday night in Washington that “the U.S. is Israel’s only friend in the world today.” And he added that “Even if the United States had thought seriously about asking for the removal of the (newly emplaced) missiles (in Egypt), I doubt if they could effect it even if they wanted to.”

The government filed a complaint Friday night with the UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) over what it claimed was a new case of Egyptian missile movement toward the Suez Canal in violation of the standstill. Israel said the missile batteries had been moved to within 20 miles of the canal. The standstill zone is 31 miles wide, on each side. This was Israel’s fourth such complaint since the cease-fire took effect the night of Aug. 7-8. The government, meanwhile, was said to be taking “a serious view” of Egypt’s objections to United States satellite supervision of cease-fire observance. (In Washington, Friday, State Department spokesman Robert J. McCloskey reiterated that the U.S. would not cease its high-level surveillance, apparently by U-2 planes. “I’ve said before that we would continue,” he said, “and I will stand on that.”) The Knesset, which went into summer recess last week, will hold a special session tomorrow. The session was forced by three opposition parties–Gahal, the State List and the Free Center–which collected the necessary signatures for the move. The three seek debated on the status of Israeli-American relations in the wake of the new missile-moving controversy. The Knesset will also be asked to vote into law the fiscal measures recently adopted by the Treasury.