The Reagan Administration formally notified Congress yesterday that it was suspending its efforts to sell a proposed arms package to Jordan and promised that no Jordan arms deal would be made before Congress has had “adequate time to further review and debate fully the issues involved.”
Notification of the decision reached the House just in time to avert a vote by the Foreign Affairs Committee today on a resolution disapproving the proposed package. In a letter from Secretary of State George Shultz, the Administration said it would not conclude the proposed deal with Jordan without giving Congress written notification 30 days in advance.
Shultz said the decision was based on his belief “that further Congressional action an a resolution of disapproval at this time would severely damage the ongoing (peace) process.”
A GRACEFUL RETREAT
The decision, which was reached in principle last week, is being viewed as a graceful retreat from an effort that was widely regarded as futile almost since Congress was informed of the Administration’s plans last fall.
In a last-minute compromise meant to avoid an embarrassing defeat of the proposed arms package in October, Congress passed a resolution barring the President from providing Jordan with arms sales until March I, “unless direct and meaningful peace negotiations between Israel and Jordan are under way.”
With increasing indications that recent meetings held by Assistant Secretary of State Richard Murphy with Israeli Premier Shimon Peres and King Hussein of Jordan had achieved no real progress in efforts to find a formula for peace negotiations, Sen. Richard Lugar (R. Ind.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, informed the White House last week that more than 80 Senators could be expected to vote to block the sale and that a Presidential veto would be easily overridden.
After apparently failing to win support for an extension of the March I deadline, the Administration moved to save what face it could by suspending its pursuit of the sale at this time rather than pronouncing the issue entirely dead.
Members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which had scheduled today’s hearing to consider the disapproval resolution before the letter from Shultz arrived, welcomed the Administration’s decision but indicated that only tangible signs of progress toward peace in the Middle East would break the continued resistance in Congress to a new arms deal with Jordan.
Calling the Administration’s move “an appropriate decision, “Rep. Lawrence Smith (D. Fla), who had vigorously opposed the sale, observed nevertheless that the language of Shultz’s letter “is not fully clear” and expressed hope that in any case, no further attempts would be made to provide Jordan with the arms until direct peace talks with Israel are actually under way.
The Administration had been under no legal obligation to give Congress advance notice of its arms sales plans since the Supreme Court ruled the legislative veto unconstitutional in 1983. The decision swept away the procedure that the Administration had been required to follow with regard to Congress in order to conclude an arms deal.
But the White House has assured Congress that it would continue to abide by the old procedures of giving Congress formal notification of plans to sell arms 30 days in advance of the proposed sale.
Although the 30-day notification period will have long passed by the March I deadline, Shultz’s letter pledges to provide another month’s debating time before reviving the deal.
The bill that was to have been considered by the Foreign Affairs Committee today would have barred delivery of the proposed weapons to Jordan even if an arms deal had already been concluded.
But most observers appeared confident today that the effort to provide the arms to Jordan would not be revived any time soon. A State Department official said the President still regards the sale as important to Jordan’s security and would continue to consult with Congress on the issue, but declined to gauge its chances of re-emerging in the near future.
“One thing that we have learned not to do is speculate. We’ll just take it as it comes,” the official said.
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