Premier Menachem Begin complained bitterly against the United States yesterday for its failure to veto an anti-Israel resolution adopted by the United Nations Security Council last Thursday and against Egypt for allegedly briefing the Palestine Liberation Organization on the progress of the autonomy talks over the past year.
Addressing a press conference after the weekly Cabinet session, Begin denounced the resolution which condemned the June 2 bomb attacks on West Bank mayors and accused Israel of not providing adequate protection to the civilian population in the occupied territories. The U.S. abstained in the vote.
A Cabinet communique charged earlier that the resolution was a pretext to demand Israel’s total withdrawal from the territories, including East Jerusalem, and therefore was in contravention of Resolution 242, the basis for the Camp David accords.
Begin repeated that charge. He noted that Resolution 242, adopted on Nov. 22, 1967, required Israel to withdraw from “the occupied areas” without any specification. He said he had brought this to the attention of U.S. Ambassador Samuel Lewis at a private meeting Friday. Lewis told reporters later that the U.S. would have vetoed the resolution had it contained any clause contradictory of Resolution 242 but that in the opinion of the U.S. it contained no such clause.
SAYS EGYPT ACTED IN ‘BAD FAITH’
Begin said that former Egyptian Prime Minister
Begin said that when the talks are resumed, he will demand that such consultations with the PLO cease. He intimated that the Egyptian position on autonomy had been influenced by the PLO He now “understood,” Begin said, the origin of the various “extremist and totally unacceptable demands” made by Egypt during the last negotiating sessions. The autonomy talks were suspended by President Anwar Sadat of Egypt on May 15 on grounds that Israel’s positions prevented progress. It is not clear when they will be resumed.
However, Begin said that Interior Minister Yosef Burg, Israel’s chief negotiator in the autonomy talks, might be sent to Washington this week for discussions but that they would focus solely on setting a date for resuming the negotiations. He stressed that there would be no substantive talks in Washington between Burg, Egypt’s negotiator Defense Minister Kamal Hassan Ali and U.S. special Ambassador Sol Linowitz.
Begin said that Israel was preparing a paper that would detail the “specified security locations” to which its armed forces would withdraw when on autonomy plan is implemented. But he stressed that those locations and the means of access to them were solely a matter for Israel to determine.
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.
