Israel will dispatch a high level diplomatic team to Cairo later this week to resume talks with Egyptian officials on ways to resolve the border dispute over Taba. American officials will also be present.
An announcement said the Israeli delegation will be empowered to discuss ideas for a compromise, methods to arrange a conciliation process and the outlines of an arbitration document. But the picture was muddied by conflicting assertions from Labor Party and Likud sources. The latter stated flatly that the Israeli team would not be authorized to discuss an outline for an arbitration document. Labor sources indicated arbitration would be on the agenda.
According to highly placed sources, the decision to send a delegation to Cairo evolved at a meeting Friday morning between Premier Shimon Peres and Foreign Minister and Deputy Premier Yitzhak Shamir, leader of Likud. Peres was joined by Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Shamir by Moshe Arens, a Minister-Without-Portfolio who often works closely with him on foreign policy matters. The decision appears to have warded off, for the time being, a head-on collision between Labor and its Likud partners in the unity coalition government. The Inner Cabinet (five Labor and five Likud ministers) was deadlocked last week over a proposal by Peres to pursue conciliation and arbitration in tandem to settle the Taba dispute and go on to broader negotiations with Egypt on other outstanding issues.
Shamir and his Likud colleagues insist on the conciliation process over Taba. Peres and the Labor Party are prepared to agree to Egypt’s demand for binding arbitration. Peres has threatened publicly that he will not continue to preside over the unity government if its foreign policy initiatives are stymied by Likud.
The delegation going to Cairo, probably Thursday will consist of Gen. (Res.) Avraham Tamir, Director General of the Prime Minister’s Office; David Kimche, Director General of the Foreign Ministry and a senior army officer — not immediately named –who will represent the defense establishment.
Most pundits here predicted the Cairo meeting would yield no substantive way out of the Taba dispute but would buy time for the Labor-Likud coalition. Arens observed candidly on a television interview today that it had “more to do with saving the government” than resolving the dispute.
The respite may be short-lived. The Israeli team has been enjoined to bring back proposals for the Inner Cabinet to consider to make what is termed a “policy decision.” This presumably will not be made for at least six weeks, after Peres and Shamir have returned from their separate journeys to the United States in connection with the 40th anniversary session of the United Nations General Assembly.
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