A spokesman for the United States Mission to the United Nations, said today that a statement attributed to U.S. Ambassador Andrew Young was distorted. Asked by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about Young’s statement in the British magazine, The Middle East, in which the diplomat reportedly said that Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat is “the most popular man in the U.S.,” the spokesman said that Young “did not say it quite this way.”
According to the spokesman, Young was interviewed by the magazine in April. What the Ambassador said, the spokesman contended, was that “at that particular time” Sadat was “more popular” in the U.S. than President Carter himself. “Young did not say that Sadat is the mast popular man in the United States,” the spokesman added, only that he is “more popular” than Carter. The U.S. envoy, according to the magazine, described Sadat as “the most popular man in the United States, bar none, including President Carter, unfortunately.”
Young was quoted by the magazine as saying: “The Americans were so taken with the sincerity and courage of the peace initiative that he (Sadat) almost single-handedly balanced what had been on irrevocable 30-year commitment to Israel, which did not consider what the Arab world wanted.” Young also was quoted as saying that the warplanes package to Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, “recognizes the needs of our true allies. Israel is not our only ally.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
