Sen. Alan Cranston (D. Calif.) has urged the U.S. to sell weapons to Jordan only if it “ends its state of war with Israel and joins the Camp David process.” He said such weapons “should be limited” to Jordan’s self-defense needs against hostile Arab neighbors.
“Instead of selling more weapons of war to Israel’s most powerful military enemy, the Administration should be selling Jordan on joining Egypt and Israel in building a lasting peace,” Cranston told the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy civic service award dinner in Kansas City, Mo. last night.
The Senate Deputy Minority Leader, who is one of the leadership opposing the Reagan Administration’s reported plans to sell Jordan advanced weapons, said the Administration has a policy of “trying to buy friends with weapons” which he said “is likely to prove far more dangerous than past U.S. policies of trying to buy Third World friends with money and just as bankrupt.”
Meanwhile, Cranston sought yesterday to have the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of which he is a member, provide economic aid to Israel which would be equal to the interest and principal Israel pays to the U.S. each year on tax debts. This could total $910 million in the 1983 fiscal year, $125 million more than the Administration has requested.
Cranston told the Committee that “Israel can’t keep pace” with the arms purchases made by the Arab countries. The Committee postponed action after Charles Percy (R. Ill.), its chairman, and Sen. Charles Mathias (R. Md.) and Nancy Kassebaum (R. Kan.) voiced strong objections. Percy, calling the proposal a “watershed” declared that “it makes the American taxpayers responsible for all Israeli debts and all future debts.”
The Committee earlier approved an amendment by Sen. Rudy Boschwitz (R. Minn.) to increase the grant in aid to Israel this year to $850 million rather than the $500 million in grants the Adminis- tration proposed. Israel is to receive in 1983 $1.7 billion in military aid and $785 million in economic aid. Boschwitz’s proposal was approved by voice vote with only Kassebaum objecting.
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