Secretary of State William P. Rogers is tentatively scheduled to arrive in Israel next Thursday and will stay here until Friday, it was reported today. He arrived in Amman, Jordan this afternoon. While no official itinerary has been released, informed sources said Rogers would go to Beirut, Lebanon tomorrow and would be in Cairo Tuesday and Wednesday. Rogers’ discussion with Mideast leaders will focus on ways to narrow Israeli-Egyptian differences over reopening the Suez Canal. He was in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia yesterday where he delivered a message from President Nixon to King Faisal stressing that the U.S. “is willing to play any reasonable and useful role” to achieve a just peace in the Mideast. Rogers is accompanied on his tour by Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Joseph J.Sisco. The crucial talks on his visit will take place in Cairo and Jerusalem. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat said in a May Day speech yesterday that Egypt would insist on its three key demands for any Mideast peace settlement.
Addressing workers at the industrial suburb of Helway, Sadat declared that Egypt would never accept any Israeli presence in Sinal under a peace settlement; that it will insist on Israeli withdrawal from all Arab territories occupied in the June, 1967 war; and would demand that Egyptian troops be allowed to cross the Suez Canal following an Israeli pull-back from its banks as part of an interim arrangement to reopen the Suez Canal. Political circles here said today that if Sadat’s remarks represent Egypt’s last word, an interim agreement on Suez is doomed. Sadat said Egypt rejected demilitarization of Sinai or any form of Israeli presence at the Sharm el-Sheikh strongpoint. He would accept demilitarized zones astride the pre-June, 1967 Israel-Egyptian borders. However, the Egyptian leader reiterated that he would accept an interim settlement only if it were the first step in a timetable of total Israeli withdrawal from Sinai. Israel in contrast, insists that a Suez agreement must be entirely separate from an overall peace settlement with Egypt.
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