Brown Says U.S. Considering Sadat’s Request for U.S. Military Hardware

The United States is “considering the approaches” made by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat for American military supplies but has “not reached a conclusion on these yet,” Secretary of Defense Harold Brown said on the “Agronsky at Large” television interview show broadcast tonight in New York on Channel 13 and last Friday night in Washington on Channel 26.

Brown’s comment came in response to a question from interviewer Martin Agronsky on whether the U.S. will give Sadat “any substantial number of weapons.” Sadat has been reported as seeking 250 F-5E warplanes, a twoseater aircraft that carries two Sidewinder missiles and has a range of up to 1300 miles.

Sadat, Agronsky said to Brown, is “playing ‘the Russians are coming'” game in saying to the U.S. “give me arms to meet the threat, the Libyan threat backed by the Soviet Union. Don’t give me arms so much to meet Israel’s threat.”

In the interview, a transcript of which was made available to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Brown replied that Sadat told him during his Washington visit that there were “potential security threats through Africa.” Brown said he was interested “to see the President of Egypt had a strategic concept that encompassed Africa as well as the Mideast and I think it was very useful to me and other members of our government to hear the way he viewed some of these problems.”

WILL NOT FIRE GEN. BROWN

Agronsky also asked Brown “Why don’t you fire” Air Force General George Brown who has been since 1974 “suffering from what many of his critics describe as ‘foot in mouth disease.’ ” Agronsky recalled the comments by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff regarding American Jews, Israel, the British and “now telling the Congress” it “must not kibitz in our foreign policy.”

Secretary Brown’s reply was that he had indicated before becoming Secretary that “I would judge General Brown by his performance in a professional, military capacity.” Asked whether that judgment would remain “no matter” what the General says, Brown said he is “going to continue to judge him on his professional abilities” and “I would certainly not bust a General down to Private for saying that people should be allowed to say what they want.”