Moderate Arabs ‘trying to mend Egyptian links’

Press, 3 November 1981, Page 8

Moderate Arabs ‘trying to mend Egyptian links’

NZPA-Reuter Cairo A number of Gulf States are trying to mend relations between Egypt and moderate Arab States, including Saudi Arabia, the Egyptian weekly newspaper. “Mayo," has said. The newspaper, organ of the ruling National Democratic Party, gave no source for its report, but said the conciliation efforts were being made secretly by Qatar and Abu Dhabi in meetings of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which comprises Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.

All Arab States, except Sudan. Somalia, and Oman; severed relations with Egypt after it signed a peace‘treaty with Israel in 1979.

The Egyptian President (Mr Hosni Mubarak) in remarks to a group of American business executives yesterday suggested that Saudi diplomacy might help reconcile Egypt and the rest of the Arab world.

And Egypt's ambassador in Washington. Ashraf Ghorbal, said in an interview'With

a Beirut magazine that contacts between Egypt and Saudi Arabia had never stopped, despite severed relations between Riyadh and Cairo.

In Jerusalem, the Israeli Prime Minister (Mr Menachem Begin), in a letter to President Reagan, has flatly rejected a Saudi Arabian Middle East peace plan as an attempt to gradually destroy Israel.

In the letter sent last week. Mr Begin said he was worried about favourable comments from the President and the Secretary' of State (Mr Alexander Haig) on the eight-point plan 'published in August by Crown Prince Fahd. of Saudi Arabia, said an official who saw the letter.

He said Mr Begin disagreed with the Americans that the Saudi plan implied recognition of Israel. The. letter said the plan's endorsement of the right of Middle East States to live in peace ,was not meant to include Israel ’’ since the

Saudis refer to Israel as "the Zionist entity" rather' than a State.

Paraphrasing the two-page letter, the official quoted Mr Begin as saying the Saudi plan was aimed at liquidating Israel by stages. Mr Begin' also wrote that the Fahd plan was incompatible with the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty and aimed at sabotaging it, the official said.

The plan calls on Israel to withdraw to its 1967 borders, dismantle its settlements in occupied territory, and set up a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.The United States says it is "encouraged" by the clause implying recognition of Israel, but the official quoted Mr Begin as writing that Israel does not need Saudi recognition. Even if the Saudis recognised Israel, the letter was quoted as saying, the other points of the plan would lead to Israel’s destruction. Without the West Bank Israel would be unable to defend

Israel’s 13km "waistline" against modern Arab weaponry. Saudi Arabia said yesterday that Israel, by rejecting the Saudi peace formula, had shown it did not warn peace. The Information Minister (Dr Mohammed Abdo Yamani) said: “Israel, by turning down the plan, has proved that it does not want peace, but on the contrary, it wants capitulationist solutions."

Asked to comment on reported remarks by Mr Begin that the Saudi plan did not refer to Israel even once, Dr Abdo Yamani said: “The dimensions of the Saudi peace plan are clear and I need not add anything to them.

"But he who really wants peace has to take into account the right of the Palestinians to express themselves before anybody else." In answer to another question, he said Saudi Arabia was satisfied with recent United States interest in the plan.