The Atlantic Council, an 18-year-old American organization designed to promote U.S. ties with Western Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, has called on the U.S. government to take quick action to safeguard Western interests in Middle East oil and security and to bring “a just settlement” of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
In a 39-page, 34-point policy paper entitled “Oil and Turmoil; Western Choices in the Middle East,” prepared by its “Special Working Group on the Middle East,” the Council urged the U.S. to be “prepared to make hard decisions and to make them soon.” The Council’s press statement released in connection with the report, stated that “The group advocates increased U.S. efforts to understand Arab points of view, especially those of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Palestinians, including the Palestine Liberation Organization.” The membership of the Working Group includes eight former U.S. Ambassadors to Arab countries.
The report said that “The U.S. should make clear its conviction that Israel’s security will be better served by real, firmly based peace with the Arabs, including the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, than by continued war and terrorism.”
It also said that “With respect to processes, we urge serious negotiations under the Camp David framework for a Middle East settlement to bring Arab parties other than Egypt into the negotiations, especially Jordan and Saudi Arabia; association of Palestinian Arabs in the process. While this is not the moment to bring the PLO into active negotiations, the U.S. should maintain informal contacts with the PLO.”
According to the report, the process includes U.S. improvement of relations with Saudi Arabia on political lines in the Arab-Israeli conflict; “a real autonomy and self-determination for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza”; a settlement between “Israel and Syria roughly on the model of the Israeli-Egyptian settlement” and a “compromise settlement for East Jerusalem.”
INFORMAL U.S.-PLO CONTACTS SUGGESTED
Implying that the U.S. should jettison its commitment to Israel on dealing with the PLO the report said that “the mutual non-recognition” between the PLO and Israel “should not rule out informal contacts between the U.S. and the PLO with the purpose of ascertaining the latter’s views and modifying them.”
The report said that “Future discussion and negotiation on the Palestinian question and other aspects of the Arab-Israeli problems, will probably subject Israeli-American relations to considerable strains.” However, “There should be no automatic American support for Israeli positions, for intransigent policies on the part of Israel — as on the part of the Arabs — can run counter to American interests in the region.”
The report continued: “We believe that the U.S. should leave no doubt of its commitment to Israel’s security and independence and of its intentions to make that commitment.” But, it added this commitment “has to be balanced by its (U.S.) vital interests in good relations with the score of countries in the Arab world.”
The policy paper also said that “The U.S. should strive to maintain its relations with Saudi Arabia on a basis that will assure cooperation on the oil question; Saudi assistance in the process of negotiations of Arab-Israeli settlements and a constructive Saudi role in maintaining security on the Arabian peninsula and in the general area of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf.”
While saying that the U.S. “should continue to put forth efforts to deny to the Soviet Union the extension of its domination or control in the Middle East,” the report observed that “Soviet influence in the region is a natural fact and cannot be excluded. But if should be U.S. policy to keep that influence within limits.”
In conclusion, the Working Group said “Time is of the essence” in dealing with its recommendations on energy, the Arab-Israeli conflict and the situation in Turkey. “On all three of these, we are convinced that the President, the Congress and the American people should be prepared to make hard decisions, based on the national interest and not on personal or parochial concerns, and to make them soon,” the group said.
The 32 members of the Working Group included 10 former U.S. Ambassadors, nearly all of them formerly posted to Arab capitals. Other members of the Working Group are three former Undersecretarys of State: George Ball, who has long advocated the positions detailed in the report, Joseph Sisco and Eugene Rostow.
Lt. Gen. Andrew J. Goodpaster, former U.S. representative to NATO and currently Commandant of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, was chairman of the Working Group. Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, National Security Affairs Advisor to President Nixon, was vice chairman.
Dixon Donnelly, a spokesman for the Atlantic Council, said “the principal work” on the report was done by John C. Campbell, former director of studies of the Council on Foreign Policy. The relation of the various members of the group to the report could not be ascertained.
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