Sen. Gary Hart (D. Col.) has drafted a letter to President Reagan urging him not to propose any sale of arms to Jordan without consultations with Congress first. The letter, signed by at least 16 other Senators, was expected to go to the White House.
A spokesman for Hart, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that the Senator did not want U.S. arms sales to be announced in the Amman Airport, a reference to Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger’s discussion of the sale of F-16 fighters and Hawk mobile missiles to Jordan while visiting Amman. The Hart letter said that any arms sale should not be approved without first consulting with Congress and U.S. allies. The letter also noted that such a sale would be escalation of the arms race.
President Reagan in a letter to Israeli Premier Menachem Begin yesterday, said that the U.S. has not made such an offer and that Weinberger did not bring any new requests from Jordan back with him.
KENNEDY SAYS ISRAEL IS THREATENED
Sen. Edward Kennedy (D. Mass.) also denounced the reported sale. He said selling F-16s and Hawks to Jordan “will represent a serious and unacceptable threat to the security of Israel, our most reliable ally in the Middle East. Such sales would violate clear Congressional restrictions imposed in 1975 and President Reagan’s pledge last fall to retain Israel’s qualitative military edge in the region.”
Kennedy noted that Jordan is opposed to the Camp David peace process and has “joined forces with Iraq, whose government is committed to the destruction of Israel.” He urged the President “to end his Administration’s practice of pursuing an arms policy at the expense of a coherent peace policy for the Middle East.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Larry Pressler (R. S.D.) said he was drawing up a resolution to block any sale of F-16s and Hawks to Jordan. He said he was preparing a letter to be circulated for more congressional signatures, telling the President he shouldn’t propose any such sale.
JEWISH LEADERS REACT WARILY
American Jewish leaders reacted, meanwhile, to Reagan’s letter. Hyman Bookbinder, Washington representative of the American Jewish Committee, said that while the President’s “reassurances on the durability of the U.S.-Israel special relationship are of course, most welcome … does it (his letter to Begin) tell Mr. Weinberger that he must not again go around offering sophisticated lethal equipment to countries like Jordan without Presidential authority to do so?”
Bookbinder also questioned whether the door was “still open to a Jordanian request for the kind of equipment that Weinberger is reported to have discussed with Hussein” and whether “the Reagan reassurance on qualitative edge for Israel include higher U.S. economic and military assistance.”
Maxwell Greenberg, chairman of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, commended Reagan’s reaffirmation of the U.S. commitment to Israel’s qualitative superiority. He also observed, in a letter to the President today, that “Your sensitivity to the quantitative balance by which the numerical superiority of Israel’s neighbors does not become overwhelming is a common sense approach to the maintenance of peace in the Middle East.”
CAUSE TO BE VIGILANT
Charlotte Jacobson, chairman of the World Zionist Organization-American Section, congratulated Reagan for pinpointing the relations between Israel and the U.S. in his letter to Begin. “If his future deeds are as good as his words, we can all heave a proverbial sigh of relief,” she said. “But the quixotic turns of his Administration’s Mideast foreign policy, and its seductive cozying up to the Arabs with lethal armaments, gives us cause to be wary and vigilant.”
Mrs. Jacobson referred to Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger as “the super arms salesman” of the Reagan Administration who “now proposes to detonate” Reagan’s pledge last September that he would preserve Israel’s “qualitative edge” of her defensive strength in relation to her enemies.
Rabbi Walter Wurzburger, president of the Synagogue Council of America, expressed that organization’s opposition to the sale of American arms to Jordan. “We are alarmed that a high official of the United States government can discuss the sale of sophisticated lethal weapons to countries who refuse to join the Camp David peace process and still consider themselves at war with Israel,” he said.
Julius Berman, president of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, urged Reagan to “establish and adhere to a competent, consistent and coherent Middle East policy to avoid continued capricious and contradicting actions and statements by his Cabinet officials,” Berman added: “The absence of a definitive U.S. Middle East policy has permitted Secretary Weinberger to lead America by the nose several times in his Middle East diplomatic missions.”
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