Reagan allows delivery of fighters to Israel

Press, 19 August 1981, Page 9

Reagan allows delivery of fighters to Israel

NZPA-Reuter Los Angeles

President Reagan has lifted his embargo on the delivery of fighter-bombers to Israel. The Secretary of State (Mr Alexander Haig) said the planes could be on their way in a matter of hours.

Announcing the decision at a press conference yesterday. Mr Haig said delivery of 16 planes, suspended since June 10. would go ahead as soon as possible.

"I think really in a matter of days or hours they will start moving." he told reporters. The Reagan Administration froze the delivery of two Fl 5 and 14 Fl 6 fighterbombers after the Israeli bombing of an Iraqi atom plant and an air raid on Palestinian positions in Beirut which Lebanese officials said caused 300 civilian deaths.

Mr Haig said the Administration had not reached a conclusion whether the raids were offensive, contrary to a United States-Israeli agree-

ment on the use of Ameri-can-supplied planes, or defensive as the Israelis had asserted.

“It wasn't necessary to make a legal judgment," he said, adding that the suspension had accomplished the aim of expressing “.... the discomfort that we felt at the time of the raid on the Iraqi reactor."

He said that the Administration had conducted an intensive review of the implications of Israel's bombing attacks and had discussed the matter candidly with the Israeli Prime Minister (Mr Menachem Begin) and the Israeli Ambassador in Washington (Mr Ephraim Evronj. Mr Haig said: "The Administration in its review has also taken into account the events and trends in the Middle East, particularly the events in Lebanon leading to a cease-fire there."

"The cease-fire is a positive new element in the region, one which the Administration hopes will continue and which perhaps will make

possible other steps towards peace in that troubled area."

In Jerusalem, there was no immediate comment from Israeli Cabinet Ministers on the lifting of the embargo. But Professor Moshe Arens, chairman of the parliamentary foreign affairs and security committee, said the move had been expected.

In Beirut. Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation denounced the decision to lift the embargo. “This resumption of deliveries to Israel can be considered an encouragement to Israel's aggression,” said P.L.O. spokesman, Mahmoud Labadi. Mr Labadi added.that the move could “certainly” threaten the shaky cease-fire in southern Lebanon.

“This was expected,” Mr Labadi said of the announcement. “Nobody took the embargo of the United States seriously. We knew it would only last for a few days and we knew Reagan would submit to the Zionist-Israeli pressure and the (Jewish) lobbv."