Letter to Baker on Shamir Plan Had ‘unprecedented’ Senate Support

Moshe Arad, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, had warm words of praise Sunday for the 95 senators who urged Secretary of State James Baker III in a letter last week to “strongly and publicly endorse” Israel’s peace initiative.

Arad, speaking to 400 people at the 34th annual Ambassador’s Ball at the Washington Hilton Hotel, said that 95 was an “unprecedented number” of senators to sign such a letter to the administration.

A Capitol Hill source said pro-Israel groups usually have trouble getting more than 60 senators to sign such a letter, unless it relates to a gut issue, such as Soviet Jewry or the Holocaust.

The Senate letter sent Friday is a sharp contrast to one signed by 30 senators in March 1988 that criticized Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir for showing “inflexibility” on the peace process.

The new letter calls Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s peace initiative “both sincere and far-reaching” and says the United States has “a vital role to play in convincing others of the merit of Israel’s plan.”

It warns that the United States “must be fully supportive, both in fact and in appearance,” if Shamir’s proposals are to receive “the consideration they deserve” by other parties to the Middle East conflict.

A House draft of a similar letter to Baker, initiated by Reps. Mel Levine (D-Calif.), Lawrence Smith (D-Fla.) and Vin Weber (R-Minn.), had gathered more than 100 signatures as of Monday.

CALL FOR TERRITORIAL CONCESSIONS

The Senate letter was greeted warmly in Israel, where Foreign Minister Moshe Arens on Sunday called it “a great achievement for Shamir’s initiative.”

But members of Shamir’s and Arens’ Likud bloc, which opposes trading land for peace, may not be as enthusiastic about a portion of the letter that stresses the need for Israel to make territorial concessions.

The 95 senators wrote at one point, “We must keep in mind that Israel will be asked to give up politically what it won military by defending itself.”

The letter does not mention Baker’s May 22 speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, but Capitol Hill sources said several of the senators were disturbed by the blunt tone of the secretary’s remarks.

The senators were “not pleased” with Baker’s terse call on Israel to “forswear annexation” and “lay aside, once and for all, the unrealistic vision of a Greater Israel,” said one source.

But the source said the senators avoided mentioning the speech in the letter, because “butting heads with the secretary of state over tone did not seem to be the most constructive way to go about it.”

Steven Shlein, press secretary to Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who co-sponsored the letter with Sen. Rudy Boschwitz (R-Minn.), said Lautenberg was “disturbed by the Baker speech,” as well as many news accounts of the speech for not emphasizing Baker’s words of support for the Israeli peace plan.

BAKER SAID TO BE ‘PLEASED’

In fact, the State Department “wholeheartedly” backed the peace plan a few days after the Baker speech, satisfying Israeli requests for such an endorsement.

The State Department does not appear to be rankled by the senators’ letter. In face, department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said Friday that Baker was “very pleased and welcomed the letter.”

The senators are asking “nothing more than what the secretary has done” and are merely “urging all of us to give this election proposal serious consideration,” Tutwiler said.

Yossi Gal, the Israeli Embassy spokesman here, said Monday that the fact that 95 senators signed a letter of such strong support for Israel provides “quite an answer” to those who say that “the United States Congress is not with us any longer.”

The five senators who did not sign were Sens. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), John Chafee (R-R.I.), Mark Hatfield (R-Ore.), Ernest Hollings (R-S.C.) and Malcolm Wallop (R-Wyo.).

Shlein did not know why the five did not sign except that Hollings was out of town when his staff was approached about the matter. Byrd and Hatfield are respectively the chairman and ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee.