Tells Gop Platform Unit Laird Says He Favors U.S. Backing for Military Balance in Mideast Until ‘end

Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird recommended today United States maintenance of a military balance in the Middle East until “an enduring settlement” was reached in the area. Testifying before the full Republican resolutions committee, Laird, like Secretary of State William Rogers in his testimony yesterday, did not mention the Soviet reduction of its military presence in Egypt.

Laird, in fact, did not name any Middle East country. In a single paragraph devoted to the Middle East in his prepared statement, the head of the US defense establishment said: “We should continue our efforts toward a stable peace in the Middle East. Until the adversaries in that region come to an enduring settlement of their differences, we should continue to supply whatever arms and equipment are needed to maintain a military balance for the purpose of preventing a new outbreak of hostilities in that part of the world.”

Afterwards, in a news conference, Laird mentioned the cease-fire along the Suez as among the foremost foreign policy achievements of the administration and credited Rogers and President Nixon in that order for it. The United States has been providing Israel, Jordan and Lebanon with military support in the form of credits and grants. Israel has received by far the lion’s share of this support allocated to the area.

While not mentioning the Soviet penetration in the Middle East, Laird pointed out that the United States and the Soviet Union “are now and will remain for some time, if not adversaries, then at least political-military opponents with different global policies.” This expression echoes President Nixon’s views set forth in his foreign policy reports to the Congress.

AFL-CIO BACKS ISRAEL, RUSS JEWS

In a 45-page brochure to the committee which is holding hearings preliminary to drafting a platform for presentation to the Republican Party’s convention opening here next Monday, the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) strongly backed both Israel and the rights of Jews in the Soviet Union to emigrate. The AFL-CIO had presented the same documentation to the Democratic Party’s platform committee in June.

“Russia’s direct massive military involvement in the Arab-Israeli dispute” and “continuous support for advocates of new aggression against Israel,” the giant labor union organization’s statement said poses a “real threat to the existence of democratic Israel as a sovereign state and to world peace and freedom.”

“We urge the US government to adhere consistently and firmly to the policy of recognizing, in deed as well as word, that peace in the Middle East can be based only on agreement between the parties, that agreement can be achieved only through negotiations between them and that no agreement among the powers can be a substitute for agreement among the parties themselves,”

“The United States should provide Israel with the economic and military help needed to meet this threat,” the brochure continued. “The United States has a vital political and economic, as well as moral, obligation to help Israel preserve her nationhood.”

Under the caption “Freedom of Jews to Leave the Soviet Union,” the statement urged US government initiative for prompt Soviet guarantee to its citizens of Jewish origin of the right to emigrate from the USSR and go to Israel and other countries. In this connection it pointed to the declaration of human rights and the “international convention on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination” to which the Soviet Union and the Ukraine are signatories.

WEISMAN URGES NATO MEMBERSHIP FOR ISRAEL AT GOP HEARING

Herman L. Weisman, president of the Zionist Organization of America, urged in testimony prepared for presentation today to the Republican Platform Committee that the party recommend the inclusion of Israel in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He also called for recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and transfer of the United States Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.

Praising the Nixon administration for a “policy of realistic military deterrence” that he said was a major factor in the expulsion of Soviet forces from Egypt, Weisman made four proposals for “reaching agreement on a just and durable peace in the Middle East.” He called for direct negotiations between the parties; recognition that a durable peace cannot be attained by “nations not directly involved”; opposition to a “no-war, no-peace” situation, and a declaration that the US will not “itself or in conjunction with anybody else, directly or indirectly, seek, favor or endorse the imposition of any terms or prior conditions for the negotiation and settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict on an interim or final basis.”