Premier Yitzhak Rabin reportedly has asked Sen. Abraham Ribicoff (D.Conn.) to approach Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in his name to find out what sort of peace settlement Sadat has in mind. Ribicoff and 12 other U.S. Senators left Israel today for Jordan and will be in Cairo over the weekend to continue their study of the possible sale of American nuclear power reactors to Israel, Iran and Egypt. Ribicoff heads the delegation.
According to the reports, Rabin asked the U.S. legislator to ask Sadat what kind of concessions Egypt was prepared to offer in exchange for territorial concessions by Israel. Ribicoff was also authorized to inform Sadat that Israel is willing to resume the Geneva peace conference provided that it is limited to the parties originally invited by the UN when the conference convened briefly in December, 1973. This would rule out participation by the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Rabin’s request to Ribicoff to serve as an intermediary to sound out Sadat was made apparently in response to Sadat’s statement in Cairo earlier this week that Egypt was willing to sign a peace treaty with Israel and was ready to go to Geneva to negotiate a settlement. Sadat said, however, that he wanted all parties involved in the Middle East conflict to attend, including the PLO.
Rabin has responded cautiously to Sadat’s remarks. Addressing leaders of the United Jewish Appeal of France, here on a three-day visit, the Israeli Premier said he agreed with Sadat that the Geneva conference was an acceptable forum to solve the conflict but only on the basis of its original composition. He praised Sadat for saving publicly that he was willing to sign a peace agreement with Israel, but added, “I learned, especially in the five years of my service as Ambassador to the U.S., that the cagiest word in the English language is peace.”
SHOULD BE VIEWED IN CONTEXT
Rabin said that Sadat’s statement should be viewed in the context of the overall Arab effort to convince the world that they mean business when they talk of peace. He said this was one of the results of the Cairo summit conference where Egypt gave in to Syria on the tactical matter of its intervention in Lebanon while Syria conceded to Egypt’s strategic approach aimed at a political solution of the Middle East conflict. “In any case, the coming few years will decide much more than the past in which direction events will develop.” Rabin said.
The U.S. Senate delegation will meet with King Hussein in Amman before going to Egypt and Iran. Their talks with the Jordanian monarch are expected to deal mainly with the Middle East situation as a whole. Jordan is not one of the countries to which the sale of nuclear reactors is being considered.
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