President Carter believes that an Israeli agreement to a state ment of principles that he has outlined is essential before Egypt will sign a “separate agreement” with Israel and King Hussein of Jordan will enter negotiations for a settlement. He also said it was “very discouraging and frustrating” to be the “messenger boy between a group of leaders in the Middle East who won’t even speak to each other.”
Carter made these points in an interview with non-Washington editors and news directors last Friday. The transcript was made public by the White House this week.
In a volunteered statement to the group, the President said that Assistant Secretary of State Alfred Atherton, whom he described as “the chief negotiator in the Middle East,” will return within a week to that area to “continue the preparation of a statement of principles that might be adequate, we hope will be adequate enough, for king Hussein to come into the discussion on the West Bank, Gaza Strip and the Palestinian question.”
President Sadat, Carter continued, “has made it clear to us that there will be no signing of a separate agreement between himself and Prime Minister (Menachem) Begin unless the resolution that I have described on the West Bank with the Palestinians is concluded.” The President at Aswan early last month said that the Palestinians should participate in the determination of their future.
WEARY OF HIS ROLE
While saying that “we have some hopes now that we will be successful” towards agreement in the Egyptian-Israeli negotiations, Carter indicated weariness in being the intermediary between Israel and the Arab states.
“It is a very discouraging and frustrating thing to be the intermediary or the messenger boy between a group of leaders in the Middle East who won’t even speak to each other. And when you carry a message from one to the other, the one who receives it doesn’t like it and blames the adverse message partially on the messenger. Then when the reply gets back there is always an allegation that the United States didn’t do its best to get a favorable answer. So it has been a very constructive thing just to get that negotiation (between Cairo and Jerusalem) begun.”
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