President Reagan indicated that he would veto proposed Congressional legislation requiring that the United States move its Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a move he said would be “most unwise.”
Reagan said the bill, introduced by Sen. Daniel Moynihan (D.N.Y.), “should never had been made because if we are to have a negotiated peace that will end once and for all the hostility between the Arab world and Israel then that would be one of the things to be negotiated.”
In an interview published today in The New York Times, Reagan said the U.S. “has no right to put itself in a position to trying to lean one way or the other” on matters such as Jerusalem and the future status at the occupied territories that he said must be solved by negotiations between the concerned parties.
Asked whether he would veto the proposed bill, Reagan said: “I am hoping I won’t have to. But like the several previous Presidents before me, I think that it is a most unwise thing.”
The proposal to move the Embassy location currently has more than 30 sponsors in the Senate and more than 200 in the House. Secretary of State George Shultz sent a letter to the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Charles Percy (R. III.), saying the Administration opposed the move of the Embassy and expressed concern that it would cause a tide of anti-American sentiment throughout the Islamic world.
The Moynihan bill requires that the “United States Embassybe located in the city of Jerusalem.”
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