President Ford indicated in an interview published in Time magazine today that while U.S. and Israeli national interests coincided at the present time, that may not always be the case; said that he would not rule out a formal U.S. guarantee to Israel but there would have to be “some real progress” toward peace first; and warned that the prospects of a new war in the Middle East “are very, very dangerous.” The President also criticized what he considered excess pressure in the U.S. for the emigration of Soviet Jews which “may well have hurt rather than helped Jewish emigration.”
Ford said that he stands by Secretary of State Henry A, Kissinger’s warning, in a Business Week interview, that the U.S. would not rule out the use of force to secure Middle East oil sources if the industrial world was being strangled. He stressed that the Secretary was replying “to a very hypothetical question.”
Asked if there are “any concrete limits on our commitment to Israel,” the President replied: “It so happens that there is a substantial relationship at the present time between our national security interests and those of Israel. But in the final analysis, we have to judge what is in our national interest above any and all other considerations.”
On a guarantee to Israel, the President said: “We have given everything except that. We have often made commitments that we consider Israel a necessary state in the Middle East, both as to integrity on territory and its existence. I wouldn’t rule out (a guarantee) under some circumstances, but there has to be, in my judgement, some real progress there before that step would be taken.”
SOVIET JEWS AND U.S. POLICY
Regarding the linkage of Soviet emigration practices and U.S.-Soviet trade written into the Trade Reform Bill signed recently by the President, Ford was asked, “Many groups if not all citizens in the Soviet Union are, by our definition unfree. Why is it right for the United States to make such an extraordinary effort for Soviet Jewish citizens?”
Ford replied: “There are a number of ethnic groups in this country who came from various parts of the Soviet Union who seriously ask that same question–Latvians, Estonians and others. Quite frankly, I think there is a stronger pressure group (in the U.S.) on behalf of Jewish emigration. Now I am told, and I think the sources are accurate, that the Jewish population within Russia has always had serious problems, regardless of geographical or other considerations so that may be a factor. We have worked very hard trying to get conditions that would increase the availability of applications for emigration, non-harassment and relatively free emigration. The great publicity that has been given by some, perhaps going beyond the facts, may well have hurt rather than helped Jewish emigration.”
The President said he saw a figure of 18,000 Jewish emigrants from the Soviet Union in 1974 compared to 35-36,000 the previous year. “We certainly hope that it could go beyond 1974 and the higher the better. But we really don’t control that, and probably never will,” the President said.
USSR IN THE MIDEAST
Asked if he thought the Soviet Union was playing a constructive role in the Middle East, Ford said the Soviets wanted to throw all of the issue into the Geneva peace conference. “We don’t rule out Geneva at this point, but we do feel that in the interim, before we go to Geneva, or they do reconvene Geneva on an active basis, we ought to try and make some other additional progress on a step-by-step basis.”
On the question of the Soviet build-up of Arab arms, Ford said: “They have generously supplied Syria. They have, of course, been negotiating with Egypt. I think it would be good if everybody had less arms in the Middle East, but that is not the way the world is out there.”
On war prospects, he said: “They are very, very serious. They get more serious every day that we don’t get some action for further progress in the settlement of some of those disputes. Every day that passes becomes more dangerous.”
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