Catching Up on the Middle East

Jimmy Carter calls a conference of scholars and officials

"By bringing together people of reflection and action, the center hopes to encourage better understanding of the is sues facing the Middle East." So said for mer President Jimmy Carter last week as he launched a four-day conference at the new Carter Center of Emory University in Atlanta. The conference featured former President Gerald Ford as cochairman.

Participants included a host of high-ranking officials, scholars and other experts from five Arab countries as well as Israel, the Palestinian community, the U.S., the Soviet Union and Western Europe.

Carter had been working for much of the past year preparing the conference, the first major project of the think tank he helped establish. After enlisting Ford's support, he visited six Middle East countries to recruit participants and also to catch up on recent developments in the region. Both men received background papers from such former policymakers as Harold Saunders, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Philip Habib.

Carter wanted the meeting to be a "consultation" at which participants "would not only present their cases but would in fact consult each other as well, dinners." especially in And so the it went, private despite sessions one or and two glitches. The Israeli government backed out at the last moment, claiming that one of the Arab participants, Harvard Professor and noted Palestinian Author Walid Khalidi, was a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Khalidi denied it. The Syrians and the Jordanians pointedly ignored each other, and Jordanian Crown Prince Hassan ibn Talal refused to accept direct questions from the unofficial Israeli participants. But nobody walked out, not even when the Israeli scholars were speaking.

There were spirited exchanges. When a Syrian delegate castigated the conference organizers for not inviting P.L.O. representatives, former Under Secretary of State Joseph Sisco countered, "I wonder what sort of Palestinian movement you are talking about. Is it the P.L.O. Syria is trying to put under its total domination?" After a Soviet delegate claimed that his country had only reluctantly rearmed Syria after its losses in Lebanon last year, Co-Moderator Ford declared, "Such an immediate resupply [of Syria] would indicate to me that [the Soviets] were a willing and active participant in the arms race." Another speaker compared the Soviets in the Middle East to "someone who can't say no but claims to be a virgin."

Crown Prince Hassan praised the Reagan initiative of last year but criticized the U.S. for "not accompanying the plan with a coherent peace strategy." He urged the U.S. to "squeeze us all a little in the interest of peace" and added that the problem of Palestine, the "root cause" of the continuing Arab-Israeli conflict, "is as far from resolution as it has ever been." Israeli settlement policy on the West Bank was a recurring theme. As Carter put it, "The massive and total commitment of Israel to this unprecedented settlement activity [has] created a new dimension. If Israel moves in any sort of final way to annex the West Bank and Gaza Strip, then any prospect for Middle East peace will be terminated in our lifetime."

Carter and Ford listened intently, took notes and occasionally steered the discussion back on track. In the process, they demonstrated that such "consultations," which the Carter Center hopes to hold regularly, are an ideal activity for former Presidents still concerned about the problems of the world. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.