Carter to step in again on M.E. peace moves

Press, 2 December 1978, Page 6

Carter to step in again on M.E. peace moves

NZPA-Reuter Washington

President Carter of the United States will resume a direct role in the tortuous Middle East peace process today, conferring with the Egyptian Prime Minister (Mr Mustapha Khalil) on the contents of a personal message from President Sadat of Egypt. The President has again expressed disappointment at the slow pace of the EgyptIsrael peace talks, which have been virtually suspended for more than a week. Mr Carter’s comments, at one of his regularly scheduled news conferences, came only a short time after Mr Khalil arrived to deliver the message from the Egyptian leader.

United States officials are hoping that the message will show enough flexibility in the Egyptian position to persuade Israel to send its negotiating team back to Washington; Egyptian sources said Mr Khalil would tell Mr Carter that Egypt was basically prepared to accept a United States formula for elections in the Israeli-occupied West bank of the Jordan River and Gaza Strip by the end of next year. But they said President Sadat also intended to renegotiate one of the clauses of the draft treaty which would effectively give the Egypt-Israel peace treaty precedence over treaties Egypt has with other Arab countries.

The Egyptian message may not move the negotiations forward very much, if at all, since Israel has already said it considers nego-

tiations on the treaty closed, ■ and the Prime Minister (Mr! Menachem Begin) has expressed opposition to the' American timetable for elections.

Israeli officials said; yesterday that Israel would ! not budge from its position that the wording of the draft treaty should not be changed. But they indicated that a compromise on the elections issue was possible.

Mr Carter has intervened personally to resolve impasses in the peace process in the past, notably at the Camp David summit meeting in September. Officials said any proposals the United States might have to get the talks moving again would be clearer after today’s meeting. One possibility is a visit to the area by the United States Secre-

tary of Sta6= (Mr Cyrus Vance). They indicated that the United States had received some knowledge in advance of the contents of President Sadat’s message during recent conversations in Cairo.

On Wednesday, the Senate majority leader, Mr Robert Byrd, acting as a personal emissary of Mr Carter, conferred with President Sadat for more than an hour, and later flew to Israel to deliver a personal message from the Egyptian leader to Mr Begin. The disappointing progress of the talks was also seen in Washington as a factor in President Sadat’s apparent decision not to go to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, which he has been awarded jointly with Mr Begin, and to send an aide instead.