Score One for Linowitz

MIDDLE EAST

Israel and Egypt agree to resume the peace talks

"They were fighting for the life of the Camp David peace talks," declared an American official last week, and so it seemed. For more than two days, U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Sol Linowitz haggled vigorously with senior Israeli officials in Jerusalem. Finally, after his last two-hour session with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Lino witz emerged with an unmistakable ex pression of satisfaction on his face. Less than a day later, the reason became clear.

After only 45 min. of discussion with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in Alexandria, Linowitz announced that the stalled autonomy talks between Israel and Egypt would be resumed shortly. Linowitz said the two nations would begin preparations for another summit conference, to be held in the U.S., probably shortly after the presidential election in November. What was more, Linowitz later added, Israel and Egypt had agreed to consider a U.S. plan--the details unrevealed--to break the deadlock over Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The negotiations were angrily suspended by Sadat last month after the Israeli parliament passed a bill affirming Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem. Linowitz's task was further complicated by Israel's truculent reaction to a series of diplomatic rebuffs at the U.N., and its reasserted plans to establish six new Jewish settlements on the West Bank. The American envoy was also concerned about the distracting influence of West European initiatives in the Middle East, including a current peace mission by Luxembourg's Foreign Minister Gaston Thorn. The Camp David negotiations, declared Linowitz sharply, are "the only game in town."

During his first meeting with Begin, which lasted almost three hours, Linowitz emphasized that any further diplomatic provocations by Israel--like Begin's threatened move to new government offices in East Jerusalem, where the population is largely Palestinian--could finish off the Camp David peace process. Next day, after a second meeting with Begin, Linowitz announced that the Prime Minister had agreed to make certain concessions that would be "helpful to the atmosphere." Begin later insisted, "We didn't change any detail." But he was evasive on the question of the proposed move of his office to East Jerusalem, suggesting that he might now be willing to back down on this sensitive matter. Linowitz hinted that the Israelis might also be prepared to release some Palestinian political prisoners currently held in Israeli jails and perhaps make some sort of conciliatory gesture toward Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza.

Once the Israelis had given Linowitz private assurance of good will, Sadat quickly agreed not only to the resumption of the peace talks but also to the idea of another summit conference later this year. To make it official, Jimmy Carter invited Begin to come to Washington following a visit to New York, which the Israeli Prime Minister had already planned for Nov. 11.

In another arena of Middle Eastern affairs, a curious courtship was taking place between Libya and Syria. On the occasion of the eleventh anniversary of his country's revolution, Libyan Strongman Muammar Gaddafi unexpectedly proposed an "immediate" merger with Syria. Equally unexpected was the almost instantaneous reply of Syrian President Hafez Assad: "We extend our arm to meet with yours in unity." Syria is at loggerheads with two of its Arab neighbors, Iraq and Jordan, and is desperately short of cash, so a union with Libya might conceivably work to its benefit. But such merger proposals, offered in the name of the "Arab nation," have a notoriously poor track record. An Egypt-Syria merger fell apart in 1961. An Egypt-Yemen union dissolved the same year. A proposed Libya-Egypt federation was stillborn in 1973. Thus the latest proposal was greeted with skepticism on almost all sides. Anwar Sadat denounced it as "funny and childish," and added scathingly: "The destiny of the Arab nation is placed in the hands of children." -

IRAN

In Touch

Exchanging letters, at least

It was the first time since the aborted American rescue mission in April that there had been any kind of direct contact between the two governments. The form was a letter from U.S. Secretary of State Edmund Muskie to Iran's new Prime Minister, Mohammed Ali Raja'i. Muskie asked that Iran's parliament reconsider the release of the 52 American hostages still held in the country. Said a State Department official in Washington: "The letter represents an effort to open the lines of communication now that the Iranians are getting a constitutional government in place."

Earlier last month, Muskie had spelled out a series of elements that he said might indicate a changed climate surrounding the hostage crisis since the death of the Shah. They were: the release of Richard Queen, which had presumably been done on compassionate grounds; the fact that the Ramadan holy season was coming to a close; and finally, the emergence of a government that would have the authority to make decisions.

The Administration did not reveal the exact contents of Muskie's letter. The reasoning was that the best course was to let the Iranians make public as much or as little of the message as they chose. It was known only that it did not contain anything like the "apology" that the Iranians have demanded of the U.S. for its role in Iran in the days of the Shah.

Meanwhile the Iranian parliament, the Majlis, turned to its own epistolary exchange: its Foreign Affairs Committee drafted an irate response to a letter sent to the Majlis last month by 187 U.S. Congressmen similarly asking for a resolution to the hostage crisis. Like many of Iran's past communications about the hostages, the Majlis letter painstakingly distinguished between the U.S. Government and the American people. It rehashed past allegations about American actions against Iran, such as the CIA-sponsored coup d'etat that restored the Shah to power in 1953.

Then it repeated Tehran's basic demand for the release of the hostages: essentially, a negotiated ransom. "Gentlemen," said the letter, "you can take positive steps in resolving the hostage crisis. You can place on your urgent agenda the assessment of the damages sustained by Iran because of U.S. policies and Iran's legitimate demands, especially the return of the assets of the Shah and his relatives. It is in this way that the path to the settlement of the crisis will be opened."

Foreign diplomats are becoming increasingly aware of how badly Tehran needs the return of the $8 billion Iranian assets that have been frozen in U.S. banks and a restoration of normal trade relations with the West. Shady deals with black marketeers who supply spare parts unavailable because of the West's boycott, for instance, have become the main cause of a runaway inflation that is estimated between 70% and 80%. The country's U.S.-supplied military hardware is in a state of such disrepair that it has put Iran at a severe disadvantage in its border conflicts with Iraq. A settlement with the U.S. would obviously go far to help matters.

Even so, nobody's hopes were very high about an early resolution of the crisis, if only because the internecine political warfare in Iran is still in full swing. No sooner had Prime Minister Raja'i sent a list of his Cabinet nominations to the Majlis last week than President Abolhassan Banisadr publicly complained that the nominations had not been approved by him, as required under the constitution. It was hardly the first time that the President and the Prime Minister had been at odds; Raja'i went so far as to lament that the President "does not consider me fit for the Education Minister's job, let alone the Prime Minister's." The Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini refused to intervene, saying: "Try to reach agreement among yourselves." Said one politician in the clerical establishment: "He is tired of petty squabbling among the government leaders."

Banisadr said he was pretty tired of it all too. In a speech before Iranian customs workers, he accused his rivals of wasting time and resources instead of responding to the country's desperate need for economic reconstruction. He said he was staying on as President only because he considered it his duty. Said he: "If I had freedom of choice, I would not stay in office a single moment."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.