U.S. Invites Israel Egypt to New Round of High Level Talks

The State Department confirmed yesterday that the United States has invited Israel and Egypt to a new round of high level talks in an effort to resume the peace treaty negotiations that have been deadlocked since November. The State Department’s chief spokesman, Hodding Carter, said the invitation was for a meeting “in the near future.” Presumably it was extended by President Carter to Premier Menachem Begin of Israel and President Anwar Sadat of Egypt to send their top level negotiators to Washington. (See P. 3.)

(Reports from Jerusalem today quoted authoritative sources as saying that the principals in the new round of talks will be Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan, Prime Minister Mustapha Khalil of Egypt and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance.)

The ministerial level talks which some sources said could begin as early as next week, seemed to rule out any chance of a second Middle East summit conference between Begin, Sadat and Carter. Carter said last month that he would “not hesitate” to call a new summit meeting under the right circumstances.

But the White House stated later that Carter would not undertake such a venture unless both sides showed greater flexibility on the issues that have blocked a peace treaty to date. Presidential Press Secretary Jody Powell said that so far the requisite flexibility has not been demonstrated.

ISSUES IN THE NEW TALKS

It is believed that the new ministerial level talks will deal with all of the outstanding differences between Israel and Egypt and attempt to resolve them as a package. This would be a departure from the earlier U.S. strategy of trying to promote agreement on lesser issues before tackling the main obstacles to a peace treaty. Such an attempt by Carter’s special envoy Alfred Atherton failed last month after Atherton spent 12 days shuttling between Jerusalem and Cairo in an effort to obtain agreement on relatively minor issues.

Meanwhile, the White House announced today that Crown Prince Fahd of Saudi Arabia will meet with Carter on March 13-14 on the Mideast situation and oil supply issues. Powell said the two leaders expected to deal with the peace talks between Egypt and Israel and the turmoil in Iran, including the shutdown of Iranian oil production. According to Powell, the Carter-Fahd talks will be held in what he described the spirit of cooperation and mutual consultation that has marked the long-standing relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.