Thursday, January 16,1986 — THE BULLETJN — 5
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By ROGER W. TALBOT
In the wake of the AchiUeLauro hijacking, it is time for the United States to face some sorry facts about our Arab friends.
First, Iraq: The State Department last year removed it from the list of nations that Harbor and sponsor terrorists, paving the way for the restoration of diplomatic ties with Baghdad. Those who follow Mideast affairs doubted whether Iraq had in fact given terrorists the boot. Rather, they saw the restoration of ties as a naked attempt togetat Iran by favoring the nation at war with it.
Those who doubted Iraq's conversion have been proven correct. The man who organized the Achille Lauro affair, Mohammed Abu Abbas; was escorted out of Italy and away from its justice system because he had diplomatic immunity from prosecution. The country that issued him his diplomat's visa? Iraq, of course.
And just two weeks after the Achille Lauro hijacking, after - the trail of Leon Klinghoffer's blood had led irrefutably from Abbas to Yasser Arafat and the smoking gun, we find the archterrorist Arafat relaxed and confident in a Baghdad guest house: ^provided by the Iraqi government. There he granted interviews to Western journalistfi in which he told them of his opposition to terrorism.
^ at Iran through Iraq is understandable; but
let's put Iraq back on the terrorist list where it belongs. .Of more consequence than the State Department's Iraqicha-rade is the unmasking of Egypt. Not only did our capricious Egyptian friends deny for five hours that Klinghoffer's murderers were still in Egypt, but they then put the terrorists on an
Roger W. Talbot is chairman of the Seattle Chapter of Americans for a Safe Israel. Anyone interested in Americans for a Safe Israel can contact Talbot: P.O. Box 121, Issaquah, WA 98207. This article first appeared in The Seattle Times. ._
Egyptian airliner (first class, no doubt) bound for Palestine Liberation Organization headquarters in Tunis.
The United States, both to capture the killers and to save any remnant of respect it had left in the Arab world, was forced to intercept the airliner and make it land in Sicily, where the murderers are being tried.
Egypt's aplogists in the State Department tell us that Egypt cut a deal with the terrorists before they knew about Klinghoffer's murder and that they felt constrained togive the killers safe passage out of the country.
But informed Mideast sources suggest that Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak is trying to persuade the PLO to move its headquarters from Tunis to Cairo and thereby help Egypt buy readmission into the Arab fold, He had to let the murderers go if he was to have any chance of realizing his dream.
Mubarak opted to do what he could to restore the prestige (!) of Arafat, damaged by the hijacking, rather than try to mend Egypt's relationship with the United States.
Mubarak did this by having Arafat as hisguest at an air show by vthe Egyptian air force less than a month after this hijacking. Where Arafat got the red-carpet treiatment for his role in the Achille Lauro affair, the United States got not a bint of an apology. Mubarak insisted that the United States apologize to Egypt for our interception of its .irliner.-
Egypt places more value on re-entry into the Arab fold than on its relationship with the United States. It will buy its re-entry even at the risk of losing its lucrative military relations with the
The weeks go by slowly for Russian Jews sentenced to long prison terms for wanting to leave the country.
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NUMBER OF WEEKS ALREADY SUFFERING THE GULAG ORDEAL
The Helsinki Agreement which the Soviet government signed allows for freedom of emigration. Let our voices — letters, telegrams and phone calls— express our protest to Western leaders to intercede and to the Soviets to set them free.
THIS WEEK WRITE OFFICIAL: Amb. Alejtei Rodionov Embassy off the USSR, 285 Charlotte Street, Ontario
Israel Sun Photo
PJRES\DBHT WSHlMU^fi^^ Begin in Egypt upon their first meeting following the funeral of
assassinatedPresident Anwar Sadat. Begin on his return from Cairo stated he was cdnvinced Egypt had a strong new governmert "which keeps control."
Ida was released March 25, 1982, after 196 weeks (almost 4 years) in Gulag. She is still awaiting permis- j ^ sion to go to Israel.
United States/which cost us billions of dollars a year in aid money.
In 1982 Libyan jets bombed and strafed Sudanese villages. The United States dispatched AWAGs along Egypt's borders with Sudan and Libya to monitor the situation a.nd to deter further Libyan moves. Egypt was embarrassed by this, the first test of military cooperation between our countries, and did everything in its power to distance itself from our actions, even though its tacit approval was apparent.
Then there is the sorry matter of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. This once solemn treaty, brokered by the United States and signed by President Carter as a "full partner," is a dead letter, as Mubarak had admitted. The responsibility for its nullification lies squarely on the Egyptians. Egypt's violations of the treaty include:
® The failure to implement cultural and economic agreements and permit the free movement of people and goods; as called for in Article III of the treaty.
® Thefailure to halt hostile propaganda. The Egyptian press, which is free only to the extent that it meets the approval of the government, is filled with the most vicious anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist libels.
Children still are taught with textbooks replete with anti-Semitic smears. Last October this propaganda probably contributed to the murder of seven Israelis on vacation in the Sinai by an Egyptian soldier, whose presence was a violation of the treaty^ Five of the seven bled to death from superficial wounds when Egyptian soldibrs prevented Israeli medics from tending to the wounded ibf several hours: Mubara dismissed the slaughter ias "a small matter" and has failed to investigate the matter as promised. "
©The continued absence of the Egyptian ambassador from Israel, who was recalled to Cairo for consultations ift 1982 and never returned, o Cphtinuation of the Arab economic boycott of Israel. © Theriemilitarizatipn of the Sihai. Egypt has constructed an infrastructure there to acccmmbdate four army battalions, even though the treaty permits only one.
It also has completed three tunnels underthe Suez Canal, two more than can be justified by the pcpulation of the Sinai.
All indications suggest that Egypt is rapidly preparing to remilitarize the Sinai. To do so would be to turn the clock back to 1967, when Egypt precipitated the Six Day War by amassing troops on israefs border fortheannouncec;! purpose of annihilating the Jewish state. Egypt's scheme is evocative of Hitler's remilitarization of the Rhineland, which set Europe on the road to World War II. •
When asked about these violations of the treaty, Egypt responds that it will not fully honor the treaty until the dispute over Taba is settled.
Taba is an acre of ground on the Israel-Egypt border near Eilat and, while great significance has been attributed to the issue by some, it is a red herring. Before Taba was the main contenti9n, Egypt said it would not honor the treaty until Israeli forces left Lebanon. When Israel left Lebanon, Egypt added the Taba condition.
Before that, Egypt said it would not honor the treaty until Irael simply agreed to leave Lebanon. When Israel agreed to leave, Egypt added the condition of actual withdrawal. And so it has gone, condition added upon condition, from March 26, 1979, the day the treaty was signed on the White House lawn, until today.
in retrospect, it is obvious that the peace treaty with Israel ' was nothing more than a strategem by which Egypt hoped to and did, in fact, regain~control of the Sinai.
It should be apparent by now that the Arabs in general and Egypt in particular are poor negotiating partners, whether it be for peace or for military cooperation. This fact is particularly galling when we recall that the United States is paying Egypt over $2 billion annually in consideration for its having signed the treaty and -to buy its friendship and military cooperation.
These payments are in addition to the return of the Srnai,
from which Israel with$lrew on timeand in accordance with the treaty, for which it was to receive peace.
True, there has been no shooting war. But the mere absence of war is not peace. Israel has yet to receive peace, and the United States is not getting its money's worth.
An honest appraisal of these facts of Mideast life suggest obvious paths the United States must follow:
• We should stop pursuing Egypt as a military ally, since it 'has proven unreliable. All we have to do is stop sending our foreign-aid money to Egypt, and it will take care of the rest.
® We must strengthen our military alliance with Israel as our only dependable strategic asset in the region. Only with Israel can we obtain commitments and expect them to be fulfilled because they do not depend on the ever-shifting sands of inter-Arab alliances and conflicts.
® To enable Israel to survive in the sea of Arab hostility, we must see that she remains strong. There are at least two things the United States can do unilaterally toward this end. First, we must stop arming the Arabs. The massive infusion of arms into the area forces Israel to divert ever increasing amounts of its income toward armaments, currently 30 percent of its gross national product, as compared to seven percent for the United States. And rather than act as a deterrent to war, as is often asserted, such weapons embolden Israel's hor.tile neighbors into military adventurism.
Second, we must abandon the Reagan Plan or any other plan foiinded on the formula of" in that plan.
Egypt has shown contempt for the land-for-peace formula in its peace treaty with Israel, as did tlie five Arab nations that sent their arniies to auack Israel in refection of the land-for-peace forinula in the 1947 United Nations partition plan. This formula docs not work, for the simple reason that the Arabs do hot want peace. Todayva$in 1947^ t^^^ want only the complete; eradication of Israel; our only true ally in the Mideast;
None of this is to suggestthat we must give up our friendship with the Arabs. Threats to the contrary notwithstanding, the Arabs have remained puvfriends and trading partners in spite of our close ties to israel from its inception.* There is no reason to think that distancing bursejyes from Egypt will change any aspect of our friendship with the Ara nor will close
ties with Egypt guarantee their cpntinuing cooperation with us.
The point is, we inust pursue our national interests in the Mideast. Our interests lie with an ally who can be depended upon in a crisis and witbW^ a common ideology.
Egypt is not that country:
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TALBOT