Goldberg: Nothing to Add to Vance Statement About Sadat’s Remark

Former United States Ambassador to the United Nations Arthur Goldberg, responding to the recent disparaging remark made against him by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, said today that he has “nothing to add to what Secretary of State Vance said in the ABC-TV ‘Issues and Answers’ program on Sunday. Goldberg, who served in the Johnson Administration as Ambassador to the UN where he helped draft Security Council Resolution 242, made his view known in a telephone conversation from his home in Virginia with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Sadat, in a Cairo speech last Saturday marking the 26th anniversary of the overthrow of King Farouk, said that “If Carter had been in power in 1967 instead of the Zionist, Arthur Goldberg, we would not have suffered as we have suffered.” During an interview on last Sunday’s “Issues and Answers” program, Vance described Goldberg as “one of the finest public servants this country has ever known.”

Meanwhile, a number of American Jewish leaders have reacted angrily to the Sadat statement. Asserting that Vance’s remarks “did not go far enough,” a spokesman for the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations today declared, “It is essential that President Sadat be directly rebuked because it is clear that his remark about Arthur Goldberg is anti-Semitic in character.”

Charlotte Jacobson, chairman of the World Zionist Organization-American Section, yesterday urged President Carter to take an official stand against Sadat’s comment. In a telegram sent to Carter, Mrs. Jacobson said, “We urge most strongly that you repudiate this slur on a fine American and restore the diplomatic balance by a forthright statement on the inviolability of Resolution 242. An apology from President Sadat is certainly in order.”