Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin stated flatly Wednesday that Syria was responsible for the thwarted attempt last month to place a bomb on an El Al airliner at London’s Heathrow Airport.
Rabin was the first ranking Israeli official to directly accuse Syria. He was interviewed here on CBS-TV “Morning News.” He declined to offer evidence to substantiate his charge on grounds that some of his information was classified to protect “the people who were involved in this inquiry and investigation.”
However, Rabin made clear in response to questions that Syria’s involvement was not simply his own opinion but that of the Israel government. Asked if the others in the coalition Cabinet would be willing to make the same charge, he replied: “There is no question about this. This isn’t a matter of an inner political problem.”
Asked if Israel would consider retaliation against Syria the way the U.S. retaliated against Libya, which it alleged was responsible for the bombing of a Berlin discotheque where an American soldier was killed, Rabin said, “we don’t speak anymore about retaliation.”
THE REAL PROBLEM OF TERRORISM
He explained, “A war against terrorism has to be looked at in its entirety and we have to devise an autonomous strategy that includes defensive and offensive means. Offensive means are whatever we do in terms of attacking the terrorist targets wherever and whenever we can find them, whenever we can do it effectively.”
Asked if he thought the U.S. handled the Libya attack correctly, Rabin said: “I am not in a position to pass judgement about what has been done, what the U.S. intends to do. The real problem was to go to the roots of terrorism, and the roots of terrorism today are not only the terror organizations but the sovereign states that finance and encourage and give them the use of their own territory and their diplomatic facilities.
“Once we reach a point that sovereign states will not support terrorism in the Middle East or elsewhere in the world, it will be a relatively easy job to finish with the terror organizations once they are taken off the countries–the sovereign states–that support them.”
Rabin was asked if he thought the Middle East peace process might run into new difficulties as a result of the Senate’s overwhelming 73-22 defeat of the Reagan Administration’s proposed sale of Stinger missiles to Saudi Arabia Tuesday night. He replied:
“I don’t see any relationship between arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the hopes for peace. Saudi Arabia has contributed almost nothing to the peace process. On several occasions it served only as an obstacle rather than a support for the peace process.” (Related Rabin story, P. 3.)
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