The view of official Washington is that the idea of an international peace conference for the Middle East is presently dead, according to Moshe Katzav, Israel’s minister of labor and social affairs.
Katzav is member of the Herut wing of the Likud bloc, whose leader, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, opposes the international peace conference idea, which has been chiefly advanced in Israel by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and his Labor Party.
Katzav was in Washington this week for a two-day visit that included a meeting at the State Department Monday with Richard Murphy, assistant secretary of state for Near East and South Asian affairs.
In an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Katzav quoted Murphy as telling him that “for the time being, as far as the U.S. is concerned, the idea of an international peace conference is dead.”
Furthermore, during the recent visit of Secretary of State George Shultz to Moscow, “the issue of an international peace conference was not discussed at all between Shultz and the Soviet leadership,” Katzav pointed out.
“An international peace conference is not only useless but also dangerous to the future of the Mideast,” Katzav asserted. He said that if such a conference took place, it would surely fail, and then the Arabs’ only option would be to resort to war with Israel.
Katzav also contended that “all the talk about an international peace conference” just makes it harder to discuss any other ideas to achieve peace, such as the idea of direct, face-to-face talks between Israel and Jordan the same as it was between Israel and Egypt nearly 10 years ago.
Asked if he found in Washington an indication that America’s economic troubles and its large trade deficit will eventually result in a sharp cut in American aid to Israel, Katzav replied: “My general impression was that there is an understanding in Washington of Israel’s economic needs and difficulties. The issue of America’s economic problems was mentioned, but there was not any indication that aid to Israel will be affected.
“My impression was, at the end of my visit to Washington, that all of the American commitments to Israel, as far as aid is concerned, will be honored,” he said.
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