Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger continued today to indicate his support for providing Jordan with Hawk mobile anti-aircraft missiles. “In my experience… an immobile anti-aircraft defense is not very useful,” he said in response to questions after an address to the National Press Club here. “Every country that I know of feels that a mobile anti-aircraft defense is essential.”
Weinberger acknowledged that similar remarks by him while visiting Amman last month had stirred up Israel. While in Jordan, he unsuccessfully tried to persuade the Jordanians to cancel their decision to buy SAM-8 missiles from the Soviet Union. Jordan turned to the USSR because Congress would permit the U.S. to sell them only Hawk missiles fixed in place, to prevent those weapons from being used against Israel.
When Weinberger returned to the U.S. President Reagan sent a letter to Israeli Premier Menachem Begin denying that any offer of arms had been made to Jordan. Weinberger said today that the Jordanian arms request will probably be made at a meeting of the U.S.-Jordan Joint Military Commission next month.
SAYS U.S. NEEDS MANY FRIENDS IN THE MIDEAST
The Defense Secretary continued to stress today that while “Our commitment to Israel remains unimpaired,” the U.S. needs “a great many good friends” in the Middle East, “not only for our sake, but for the sake of Israel, for the sake of the whole Mideast, and indeed for the sake of maintaining the peace.”
On the situation in Lebanon, Weinberger said he did not know if war would break out. But he noted that there was a “dangerous and alarming buildup of arms in that very volatile area.” Without specifying whether the build-up was by the Palestine Liberation Organization or by Israeli forces in northern Israel, Weinberger said the U.S. wanted to “defuse” as quickly as possible any potential conflict.
“We hope very much that there would be no precipitous action taken in the region,” he said. Weinberger, who has been conducting a well publicized feud with Secretary of State Alexander Haig, praised President Reagan’s special envoy to the Middle East, Philip Habib, and the State Department today for the “extraordinarily skillful handling” of the situation in Lebanon and for efforts to preserve the peace process there.
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.
