Former Vice President Walter Mondale attacked the Reagan Administration’s Middle East policy, which he said was a “mess,” and called on President Reagan to issue a “clear” unequivocal statement that the Administration will not sell Jordan F-16 fighter planes and Hawk mobile missiles.
“I believe this Administration should give clear and unambiguous commitment that there will be no sale of sophisticated weapons to Jordan and any other country that threatens the security of Israel,” Mondale said in an address last Thursday to an Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith luncheon which honored Walter Yetnikof, president of the CBS Record Group.
Mondale said that he “could not understand,” after hearing various statements by Administration officials, whether the U.S. is going to sell weapons to Jordan. Noting that Israel has been, and was perceived by previous Administrations, a strategic asset to the United States, Mondale charged that the present Administration has moved away from Israel and in fact “began to see Israel as standing in the way of U.S. policy in the Mideast.”
SINGLES OUT SPECIFIC POLICIES
He criticized the suspension of the memorandum on strategic cooperation shortly after Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger signed it in Washington last December. “Israel is either in our strategic interests or is not, ” Mondale declared.
The former Vice President also sharply criticized the Administration’s apparent lack of interest in pursuing the Camp David peace process, noting that the Administration had waited almost a full year to dispatch a special envoy to the autonomy negotiations. He charged that the Administration appointed as envoy an unknown person, who lacks the stature that the role requires. He was referring to Richard Fairbanks.
Concluding, Mondale said the U.S. should work for peace in the Mideast instead of “arming the area to the teeth.”
Nathan Perlmutter, national director of the ADL, was also critical of future arms sales to Jordan, warning that such sales could lead to war. By selling arms to the Arabs, the U.S. could erase Israel’s qualitative military edge over its Arab foes. Perlmutter noted that the proposed “hawking” of F-16s and mobile surface-to-air missiles to Jordan comes on the heels of selling AWACS and other weaponry to Saudi Arabia.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
