U.S. Will Reply to Soviet Mideast Peace Plan This Week and Will Seek Clarification

The Johnson Administration will reply tomorrow or Tuesday to the Soviet Union’s reported peace plan for the Middle East by requesting clarification of ambiguities and contradictions in the proposal, sources said today. The purported main points of the plan were published in Arabic in the Lebanese newspaper Al Anwar Friday in what informed diplomats said was a fairly accurate version. Adumbrated versions of the plan, said to omit key points, appeared in the press in Cairo, Damascus and other Arab capitals. Israel’s United Nations Ambassador Yosef Tekoah, said Friday the Soviet proposals “smack of a Middle East Munich” and declared that Israel “will not become the Czechoslovakia of the Middle East.” The reported American reply prepared by the State Department for President Johnson’s approval was not a reaction to the Soviet plan but a list of questions, the answers to which Moscow will have to give the Nixon Administration.

State Department and foreign service officials appeared to be split in their reactions. Some were said to feel that the Soviet initiative represented the first really serious effort by Moscow to come to grips with the Middle East conflict and reflected Kremlin concern over a new outbreak of war and a possible U.S.-Soviet confrontation. These officials insisted that the Russians were demonstrating a sincere desire for a political solution and pointed to an enlarged role the UN peace envoy, Ambassador Gunnar V, Jarring would purportedly have under the Soviet plan. Other officials however share the Israeli view that the Soviet proposal was designed wholly to satisfy Russia’s Arab clients by returning the Middle East to the status quo ante of June, 1967 with no peace treaty, no secured boundaries and no guarantees to Israel. Key operative points in the Soviet plan, according to the Beirut account, called for:

Israeli withdrawal from all of the territories occupied in 1967, preceded by a preliminary withdrawal of Israeli forces some 30-40 kilometers East of the Suez Canal, upon which Egyptian forces would enter the Canal zone to clear the waterway for navigation; return of Arab Army and police forces to the occupied areas during the second stage of the Israeli withdrawal and the stationing of UN forces near the June 5, 1967 lines, in Sharm el-Shiekh, commanding the Straits of Tiran, and in the Gaza Strip; a Security Council resolution calling for the dispatch of United Nations forces to guarantee freedom of navigation to ships of all countries in the Tiran Strait and Gulf of Aqaba; an agreement to be reached through the mediation of Dr. Jarring on such points as agreed and secure boundaries, freedom of navigation in the region’s international waterways, a just solution of the refugee problem, and assurances of the territorial integrity and political independence of each state by such means as establishment of demilitarized zones; documents to be signed by all parties and deposited with the Security Council, ending the state of war and recognizing the sovereignty and territorial integrity of each state in the region, such documents to become operative following Israeli withdrawal and to be guaranteed by the Security Council or its four permanent members — the U.S., Britain, France and Russia.

According to informed sources, the U.S. note will ask the Soviet Union: Whether the Russians see Israel and the Arab states negotiating new boundaries as part of a peace settlement; whether they envisage Israel’s use of the Suez Canal as part of that settlement; the exact role they have in mind for Dr. Jarring. These points, American officials said, were vague, ambiguous or contradictory in the Soviet note. On the Suez Canal issue, the Soviets nowhere stated explicitly that Israeli ships and cargoes should be allowed transit through the canal although one point on which agreement would be sought through Dr. Jarring is “freedom of navigation in the region’s international waterways.” Another paragraph stated that one point to be agreed upon is “secure and recognized boundaries accompanied by relevant maps.” But the preceding paragraph mentioned only “a peaceful settlement through withdrawal of the Israeli forces from the occupied Arab territories.” The U.S. also wants to clarify the role of the Big Four envisaged by the Soviets. The Russian note insisted that all points be mediated through Dr. Jarring. But it left by steps in the process up in the air and did not say who was to draw up the plan to be agreed upon by the parties under Dr. Jarring’s aegis. Finally, the Soviet reference to a Security Council–or Big Four–guarantee of Israel-Arab borders appeared to some officials to point to an imposed settlement, not one hammered out by both parties through Dr. Jarring with Big Power aid.

Ambassador Tekoah and other Israeli officials claimed that the Soviet Plan would strengthen one party at the expense of the other with a “Nasser-Soviet axis” assuming hegemony in the Middle East. They warned that the Soviet plan, if implemented, would lead to war. Informed sources at the UN said yesterday that Dr. Jarring will await results of the Soviet move before resuming his peace mission. They said he would postpone making a new round of Middle East capitals for about a week. He had been scheduled to start in the middle of this month.