Basic HTML Version
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, March 13, 1980
Pa'ge 12
"� major and fundamental trans-Atlantic split i � rapidly widening . between
the European common market countries and the United States over Middle
East policy..•.The contrast between President Carter backpedaling on be
half of the Israelis while France was pushing forward on behalf of the
Palestinians could scarcely have been made more vivid, or welcome, to
Giscard. The French president repeated the self-determination formula
in similar communiques as he went on to Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates,
Qatar, and Jordan. He also picked up a number of important long-term
oil deals along the way....
"The inevitable results of all of this within the next six months will
be the sad, even dangerous, weakening of Sadat's position because of his
failure to deTrver anything for the Pa stinians; the Palestinians gain
ing strong support in the United Nations from the Europeans in their
quest for homeland and the right of self-determination, and Israel
frantically and vainly building more West Bank settlements•..• "
The Common Market, as a whole, is going to follow up this first major
diplomatic foray into the Middle East with more action. "Britain's
Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington," reports the U.S. News� World Report,
"now talks of revising key U.N. Resolution 242 to address the problem on
a Palestinian homeland. The European Economic Community fashions a
political declaration that would call for bringing the Palestine Libera
tion Organization into peace talks." Note that. The Common Market now
embarking upon purely political joint action.
The Chancellor's Concerns
The French-led Common Market Mideast drive follows on the heels of wide
spread mistrust over U.S. demands for strong action against the Soviets
in the wake of Afghanistan. The French for their part, have not at
tempted to hide their dispute with Washington over this crisis. French
businessmen, in fact, stand to gain more than other EEC members in
increased trade with Moscow. A half-billion dollar aluminum smelter
project in Siberia-;-frozen by America's Alcoa, will probably now go to
French contractors.
Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of West Germany was in Washington last week
trying to convince Mr. Carter of Bonn's sensitive position with regard
to the Soviets and detente. Mr. Schmidt told interviewers in Washington
that the U.S. must remember that Germany is still divided; that the
Soviets can turn up the heat on isolated Berlin at any time. "I can't
forget," he said, "that the Warsaw Pact troops are only 30 miles from
my own home in Hamburg."
Schmidt also told interviewers from the Wall Street Journal that "we
import 97% of our oil and gas, some of it from the Soviet Union. It is
not too easy for us to tell them we don't need it any more. We need it
•.•• We have to export in order to be able to import. We export about
about 30% of our GNP. Your exports are about seven percent. We clearly
see that sanctions vis-a-vis the Soviet Union--or South Africa
=-=
are a
sword with two edges.
"Since the conference of Helsinki in 1975, we have gotten, with the
agreement of the East European government, about 230,000 Germans out of
their states who wanted to leave those states to join us in the Federal