Washington Visit Outfits Israel with New Means to Fight Terror

Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres will return from his latest official visit to Washington with new tools in the Israeli military arsenal to fight terrorism.

Peres began a three-day visit here Sunday by signing an agreement that will help bolster Israel’s ability to defend itself against missile attacks.

He was scheduled to end the trip by signing another cooperative agreement on combating terrorism.

Peres and President Clinton also planned to launch a committee to craft the first formal U.S.-Israel strategic cooperation agreement.

Peres timed his visit to coincide with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee annual policy conference. The plenary session’s Sunday night opening honored Clinton and Peres in a “Salute to the Peacemakers.”

At that gathering, Clinton and Peres heaped words of praise and warmth on each other and pledged to pursue peace vigorously in the Middle East.

At a Pentagon news conference Sunday after meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry, Peres said, “Let’s face it, fighting terror is enabling the peace process to go ahead.”

He added, “It’s two sides of the same coin.”

Perry and Peres, who also carries the title of defense minister, announced a cooperative program that will provide Israel with virtually immediate warning of any missile firings.

Peres and Clinton were planning to sign the terrorism accord after a White House meeting set for Tuesday.

Peres was scheduled to leave Washington just a few hours after the arrival of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.

Arafat’s visit to Washington was hastily arranged after the Palestine National Council voted last week to amend its covenant.

Plans were also in the works for a Clinton-Arafat meeting later this week, a senior U.S. official said.

A U.S. team will head to Israel next week to continue work on the U.S.-Israeli Arrow air-defense missile and the U.S. Nautilus laser-defense system, which is still in the development stage, Perry said.

In addition, the team will look at ways of providing Israel with an interim defense against Katyusha rockets launched by members of the Islamic fundamentalist Hezbollah.

A barrage of such rockets this month injured more than 100 Israelis in northern Israel and set off a massive retaliation by Israel.

Such a system of defense “should reduce any incentive for any country to launch a missile” against Israel “because they would see it would be ineffective,” Perry told reporters.

The agreement reaffirms U.S. support for Israel’s efforts to develop a defense against ballistic missiles such as the Scuds that Iraq fired on Israel during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Under the agreement, the U.S. military would share with Israel “real-time” missile launch warnings available from spy satellites.

Perry said a prototype of the Nautilus anti-rocket laser weapon, which fires a high-energy beam of light to burn up rockets in flight, should be available for testing in Israel by the end of next year.

Expressing gratitude for the new agreement, Peres said, “The relations between the United States and Israel are at their best, and the cooperation between the defense establishments of the States and Israel [is] as good as one can hope for or think of.”

The United States, Perry added, is “committed to maintaining the qualitative edge of the Israeli Defense Forces.”

At the AIPAC session, Clinton used the occasion to rally behind peres, who is facing a heated campaign for re-election in less than one month.

Calling Peres “our full partner for peace and security,” Clinton praised the prime minister’s recent book, “The New Middle East,” saying that he “has been able to imagine what the future might be like beyond the history that can be made with the other peace signings.”

“And that vision is what must drive us all into tomorrow,” Clinton said.

Just days after his administration brokered a deal for a cease- fire in Lebanon, Clinton also reaffirmed U.S. support for Israel’s recent actions.

“Make no mistake about it,” Clinton told more than 2,000 cheering AIPAC delegates. The Israeli attack on the U.N. refugee camp was caused by “the deliberate tactics of Hezbollah in their positioning and firing.”

“The tragic misfiring [was] in Israel’s legitimate exercise of its right to self-defense,” Clinton said.

“If the Jewish people have endured centuries of exile, persecution, the ultimate evil of the Holocaust, flourishing against all the odds, surely together they can throw back their shoulders and raise their heads and say, ‘After all this, Hezbollah and Hamas will not succeed where others have failed.'”

Peres lavished praise on Clinton, calling him a “great leader of the free world.”

Peres used his remarks to drive home and enlist support from the AIPAC delegates for his vision of a peaceful Middle East.

In an issue that hits home for AIPAC delegates who lobbied last year for a bill that recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and requires the United States to begin plans to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Peres said, “Jerusalem will remain united and the capital of Israel.”

After his meeting with Perry, Peres attended a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery honoring British Maj. Gen. Orde Charles Wingate for his contributions to the training of Jewish forces in Mandatory Palestine in the 1930s.

At the annual memorial ceremony sponsored by the Jewish War Veterans of the U.S.A., Peres laid a wreath on Wingate’s grave and called him a “glowing comet and military virtuoso devoted to Israel.”

He also laid a wreath on the grave of Commerce Secretary Ronald Brown, who was killed earlier this month in a plane crash in Croatia.

During his visit, Peres was also expected to meet with congressional leaders and to travel to New York to consult with Jewish leaders.