Deputy Foreign Minister Yehuda Ben-Meir said today that the United States has not given Israel any ultimatums on the situation in Lebanon. “I believe the U.S. government knows that it cannot talk to us through ultimatums,” he told Israel Radio. “It does not suit relations between allies, neither does it help.”
Ben-Meir, who is with Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir in Washington, said the meeting yesterday between Shamir and President Reagan was not held in a “heavy atmosphere.” He said the talks between the two officials was marked by a serious mood on the part of both, but that the stress was on the basic friendship between Israel and the U.S.
Ben-Meir noted that Israel shared the American concern over the situation in west Beirut. During his meeting with Reagan, Shamir stressed that Israel had agreed nine times to a cease-fire agreement since the war in Lebanon began June 6, and it was the terrorists who repeatedly violated the agreements. Ben-Meir said that, in general, the Americans shared with Israel the goal at getting the 5,000-6,000 PLO fighters out of Lebanon, although there were differences regarding the way to do so.
Political sources in Jerusalem reiterated today that Israel insists basically on the evacuation of the terrorists from west Beirut and their departure from Lebanon, but views as secondary the “technical details” regarding the way the evacuation takes place.
The latest plan attributed to U.S. special envoy Philip Habib calls for the transfer of the first group of PLO men from Beirut straight to another Arab country, followed by the deployment of a multinational force to separate the terrorists from the Israel Defense Force, and then the continuation of the evacuation with a parallel withdrawal of the IDF.
But Defense Minister Ariel Sharon told soldiers today that Israel could not accept Habib’s plan, which has apparently been accepted in principle by the PLO. Sharon said Israel could not trust the PLO to complete its withdrawal once the international force is in position as a buffer between the terrorists and the IDF, thus making it difficult for Israel to deal with the terrorists who failed to withdraw as arranged.
Sharon said the multinational force should move into position inside west Beirut only after all the PLO had left the area, after which Israel would be prepared to withdraw from the immediate city limits. Complete Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon would come only after all PLO and Syrian forces had left all of Lebanon, he said.
EBAN LESS CONFIDENT THAN BEN-MEIR
Labor Alignment Knesset member Abba Eban, who was also interviewed today on Israel Radio, sounded less confident than Ben-Meir about the relations between the U.S. and Israel, and suggested that the Foreign Ministry also felt the same way. “If the talks in Washington were good, I hope there will not be many such ‘good’ talks,” Eban said.
The former Foreign Minister said the problem was not defining the nature of the Shamir-Reagan meeting, but clarifying the truth. The truth is, Eban said, that the U.S. and Israel do not share the same goal in Beirut, contrary to Shamir’s statement yesterday after meeting Reagan that the U.S. and Israel share a “common goal” to end the domination of Lebanon by the PLO and the Syrian army.
Eban noted that the American goal is to get the terrorists out of Beirut without having the IDF entering Beirut or bombarding its western sector, as it did for 14 hours last Sunday, whereas Israel’s goal is to get the terrorists out even if it requires a battle in Beirut and the continuation of the heavy shelling.
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