Premier Yitzhak Shamir told the Knesset Monday that he was very pleased with the visit of Secretary of State George Shultz because it demonstrated anew that the United States will never apply pressure on Israel and “our thoughts and ideas flow through the same channel.”
Shamir addressed the opening of the winter session of Parliament hours after Shultz departed for Cairo following three days of talks here with the Premier and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
In a clear reference to the proposed international conference for Middle East peace, which he adamantly opposes, Shamir praised the United States, “refusal to listen to the advice of certain states and other parties to abandon this path of direct negotiations and to apply pressure on us to agree to ideas whose real purpose is to impose solutions upon us that contradict our basic interests.”
But circles close to Peres, the government’s most vocal advocate of an international conference, said Monday that Shultz had in fact sought to persuade Shamir to agree to some kind of international forum as a launching pad for Middle East peace talks. They said he and Shamir parted at odds over the issue.
Shamir acknowledged in his Knesset speech that “there are certain differences on certain issues” between Israel and the U.S., adding, “let us discuss such differences as friends and allies.”
He also conceded that “others in government” favor an international conference, an allusion to Peres and his Labor Party. “Would that these differences be settled soon so that Israel can appear united on this issue too,” Shamir said.
Shamir referred at length to the Soviet Union. He said Israel “recognizes that the USSR has legitimate interests in this region” but was “sure” that Moscow felt that the absence of normal relations with Israel was “an anomaly” which brought it “no advantages.”
He said Israel was willing to discuss policy issues involving the region with Moscow, provided there are normal diplomatic relations and a change of Soviet policy on Jewish rights in the USSR and emigration.
The issues is “at the heart of Israel’s existence and destiny. The state of the Jews arose in order to gather together the Jewish exiled,” Shamir said.
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