Israeli Defense Minister Ezer Weizman met privately with President Carter for a half-hour in the White House this afternoon and told reporters afterwards that he had “met an old friend who took courageous decisions.”
That was his response to a flood of questions as to whether he and Carter had discussed the aborted American hostage rescue attempt in Iran last week. Weizman said they had not and declined to comment further. He observed, however, that “It is not fair to go into analyzing an extremely difficult situation.” Asked if Israel had “even a secondary role” in the American action, he replied, “absolutely no.” He gave the same answer when asked whether he himself had known about the rescue attempt beforehand.
Weizman said he and the President had discussed the future of the Israeli-Egyptian-American peace process. He also disclosed that he was returning to Tel Aviv sooner than planned because his counterpart, Egyptian Defense Minister Kamal Has- san Ali, will be arriving there tomorrow for the next round of autonomy talks which begin in Herzliya Thursday. With respect to the peace process, Weizman would say only that “I would like to see it expedited.”
Earlier today, Weizman conferred at the Pentagon with Defense Secretary Harold Brown and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. David Jones. Asked if he had discussed Israeli co-production rights for the U.S. F-18 combat aircraft, Weizman replied in the negative. He said that he and Brown discussed “things already in the pipeline” and added, “I didn’t come to the Pentagon with problems.”
Before departing for Israel, Weizman will pay a courtesy call on Secretary of State Cyrus Vance or the State Department. This is the final day in office for Vance whose resignation was announced yesterday.
Before coming to Washington, Weizman flew to Minneapolis where he was honored by the Jewish National Fund of American at a dinner Sunday night attended by 1000 friends and supporters of the JNF. Weizman received the Friends of Israel Award, the highest honor the JNF confers, in recognition of his contributions to the cause of peace.
There was also a special convocation cosponsored by the JNF at the University of Minnesota, attended by more than 2000, at which the University Board of Regents bestowed its Distinguished International Service Award upon Weizman. University president C. Peter Magrath lauded him for extraordinary service to Israel and the international community. Weizman commended the U.S. government for “acting courageously” in its attempt last week to rescue the hostages in Iron, as a reflection of “the will and spirit of the greatest nation of the world.”
Several days earlier, in New York, the Defense Minister was honored at a reception which launched the JNF’s Galilee Development Project in Israel, where the JNF will develop sits to help create a new environment that will bring the Galilee into the mainstream of Israel’s daily life and economy for the benefit of all its inhabitants.
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