Word: suez
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Administration has postponed a decision, partly because it sees the Mid dle East power balance differently from the Israelis, partly because it considers the Phantoms a useful lever for moving Israel into a Suez Canal agreement. The Phantom decision is still, so to speak, up in the air, but Jerusalem hopes for some progress when Assistant Secretary of State Joseph J. Sisco makes a scheduled visit this week. "We don't expect Sisco to come flying over in a flotilla of Phantoms," says a government official. "But we do hope that he will come with words of encouragement...
...Egypt lost so many pilots in the war of attrition that after Russian resupply it had four times as many jets as men to fly them. The Israelis fret nonetheless about the growing number of aircraft in Arab countries, and there are signs that they will not discuss a Suez agreement until there is some redressing of the balance...
...Attrition. The resurgence of guerrilla activity showed, as Premier Golda Meir quickly pointed out, that Israel needs secure borders to ensure peace in the Middle East. At the same time, Egypt is becoming less and less optimistic about the chances of peace with Israel and the reopening of the Suez Canal. Al Ahram Editor Mohammed Hassanein Heikal, who usually mirrors official thinking, said last week that the time had come for another round of "effective attrition" against Israel combined with pressure...
...such a memorandum, much less agreed to such terms, were furious. Quickly, the State Department explained that the memo was not official. What had happened, it said, was that Donald Bergus, Washington's provisional representative in Cairo, had offered Riad his own "informal and personal" suggestion for a Suez plan. "He certainly stepped off the reservation," said one official, "but we're not going to disown him. He's a capable man with excellent contacts...
...would have ignored Rogers' directive. A possible explanation is that Bergus was sending up trial balloons at the behest of the State Department. That seems especially likely in view of the fact that the U.S. is tinkering with a proposal-oral -much like Bergus' for solving the Suez impasse. It calls for Israel to pull back about 35 miles in Sinai, for Egyptian civilians and a token military force to cross over the canal but to move only 15 miles into the peninsula, and for a formal ceasefire. Neither Israel nor Egypt has seized on the plan, however...