Freshman Republican Sen, John Heinz of Pennsylvania strongly objected yesterday to the Ford Administration’s recommendations cutting back aid to Israel and asked President-elect Jimmy Carter to rectify the aid program.
Heinz expressed his views in a letter to Carter which he made available to the media at the Capitol in the wake of President Ford’s presentation of the budget for fiscal year 1978. The budget does not specify amounts for Israel or other countries but it is understood that Ford, on the advice of the Office of Budget and Management, had recommended $1 billion in military sales credit and an additional $500 million in security supporting assistance to Israel.
In his letter to Carter, Heinz said that the amount Ford is recommending is 14 percent less than the sum allocated to Israel for the current fiscal year and more than one-third less than the $2.3 billion that Israel had requested in each of the last three years. “It is my view that such further reductions in military assistance are unconscionable,” Heinz wrote Carter, “both for pragmatic and military reasons and because of the symbolic impact such an action will have on the Arab world.”
U.S. policy has been and should continue to be to facilitate a negotiated settlement in the Middle East, Heinz said. He added that the U.S. must “insure that Israel is in a position to negotiate from strength on equal basis with the Arabs.” Reductions in aid at this point to Israel could well serve as a signal to the Arab world “that our commitment to the continued strength of Israel is weakening,” Heinz wrote. “The effect would be to encourage” intransigence and terrorism and to reduce Israel’s ability to defend itself.
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