Israeli newspapers reported this afternoon that President Ford sent a sharp letter to Premier Yitzhak Rabin Thursday in which he rebuked Israel for taking too hard a line in the negotiations with Egypt being conducted by Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and warned that the U.S. would hold Israel responsible for failure of the talks and would have to reconsider its relations with Israel.
Rabin acknowledged today that he had received a letter from Ford last week but refused to divulge its contents on the basis of the “special relationship” between the U.S. and Israel. However, Rabin insisted at a press conference here that descriptions of the letter by the news media were exaggerated and distorted.
According to Israeli newspapers, Ford’s note, received during 16 hours of marathon deliberations by the Cabinet Thursday, shocked and angered the ministers. The newspapers alleged that the Presidential note was dispatched to Jerusalem at the specific request of Kissinger after the latter reported to Ford on the hard line taken by President Anwar Sadat at Aswan. Kissinger admitted that he had initiated the President’s note but the text of it apparently was stronger than he had anticipated, the Israeli newspapers claimed.
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