While House Deputy Press Secretary Gerald Warren declined to comment today on Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s dismissal of Premier Aziz Sidky and his announcement yesterday that he was assuming the Premiership to prepare Egypt for “total confrontation with Israel.”
Sadat announced his government shake-up at a joint meeting of the People’s Assembly and the central committee of the Arab Socialist Union, Egypt’s only political party. He stressed that Egypt must conduct a dual policy of military pressure on Israel and continued efforts to gain a political settlement.
He criticized the United States for its plans to sell Israel more F-4 Phantom jets and A-4 Skyhawk attack planes. He said this had created an “extreme danger” of a military. explosion in the Middle East. He also said that Egyptian relations with the Soviet Union had again been put on a solid basis. Last summer, Sadat expelled some 20,000 Soviet military advisors and technicians from. Egypt.
Sadat rejected again any territorial concessions as a basis for negotiations with Israel. Rejecting also the idea of direct talks, he said Egypt would not accept a “partial settlement” that was not linked to eventual total Israeli withdrawal from the administered territories, or a separate settlement in which the interests of the “Palestinian resistance” and of Israel’s other Arab neighbors would be “sacrificed.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
