Gerald Ford, Hussein of Jordan, Henry Alfred Kissinger and Zaid al-Rifai

“ The fact that the Syrian front with Israel is a limited area of conflict concerns us and we judge that the Syrians may well wish to move militarily against Israel if they cannot achieve progress. If Syrian military activity occurs they may well embarrass Egypt into taking military action in support of them. ”

“ Our proposal was for two times as much in money as you indicated the United States could support.
Secretary Kissinger: The President knows the Congress extremely well and the constraints they have put us under. It is a strategy tragedy what the Soviets are pouring into the area militarily.
The President: It is true in other areas beyond the Middle East that Congress has in the last two or three years made deep cuts in our assistance. It all comes out of our involvement in Viet-Nam and it operates like the swings of a pendulum. ”

“ But there on have been problems /on all sides. Progress already achieved makes further progress toward withdrawal even more necessary.
The Jordan River is not much of a military obstacle between Jordan and Israel. It is a kind of psychological barrier between the East Bank and the Palestinians. Achieving an early disengagement for us is a test of whether we get involved or not. We would like to know, Sir, where we stand now. If we are not to be involved, we are prepared to turn over our responsibilities to the PLO and let them try to deal with the problem. ”

“ We If we do not move ahead with disengagement, the Syrians have threatened and are likely to become more adventurous. We believe there is not much time available to us. We are faced with growing political pressures and military pressures and unless we are able to meet them we have strong reason to believe they could become overwhelming. Syria or Israel could get involved in the conflict again, and in that event it would be most difficult for Egypt to stay out. Failure to make progress encourages the Syrians to use force. ”

“ We have therefore to keep up If we look at the momentum or lose ground and face serious crises. If we look at the realities we have the two two disengagement agreements--Egypt and Syria.
As for Egypt, we believe that President Sadat and the government and the people of Egypt in the future will want to look inwards in an attempt to solve their most pressing problems. They have a very poor economy and their people have great needs. We believe they are not interested in carrying out further adventures. ”

“ Our choice of continuing our responsibility for the West Bank is the most difficult for us. First, it would be far easier to get the PLO to take it on. However, they are an unknown and dangerous quarter quantity and there are dangers in turning it over to the PLO for both Israel and the Arabs, and therefore we do what we can. ”

“ Secretary Kissinger: I hope His Majesty will not cut loose the West Bank. There is a deep interest in the area in the Palestinian question and it is a hard and difficult issue for us. Once cut loose, the Palestinians could turn on Jordan as well as on Israel. It is a very explosive question. Your Majesty showed great heroism in taking on the fedayeen in 1970. It would be in our judgment a great mistake to give the radicals on the East BAnk any great encouragement. ”

“ As you know, too, we have been working on support from the other Arabs. On the military side we have instructors in the Gulf and an engineer even company in Oman. Our friends here often refer us to the oil-rich countries for support. But there is not the degree of maturity among them required for the kind of support we need. ”

“ We are not going to have a comfortable time but we must avoid confrontation with pressure-groups. We need four weeks to get the President pressure-groups lined up so that we are not assailed from all directions.
The President: We are sure you are familiar with these grups which represent business and labor and all the other various groups and interests in this country. Last week I began the process of rebuilding our relations with these groups. We began with labor. As we go on in the fight here against inflation, we cannot exclude labor. ”

“ Other Palestinians not from the West Bank or from Gaza are left as refugees from the Jewish areas which even under the UN partition plan would have been belonged to the Israelis.
Some of these people are supporters of the Palestinian organizations which represent all the contacts contradictions prsent present in the modern world. The majority of Palestinians we believe want a solution. All of us have encouraged them to be part of the scene. We, of course, want to have the disengagement which will be the beginning of an Israeli withdrawal. ”

“ Particularly she could not see the dangers in the future but was always preoccupied with the past. The new people are a different group and have a different grasp of the problem--I mean Rabin and Peres. ”

“ Secretary Kissinger: These are major questions. Some of the the ideas which we discussed with /the Prime Minister could be made compatible with our objectives. Moving early will be extremely difficult. His Majesty has negotiated directly and he knows that no great progress can be made rapidly. We consider that there will be substantial problems with the staffing and timing of whatever situation.
For the future we face two problems--what to do about Egypt and Israel and what to do about Jordan and Israel. ”

“ Our phosphates have increased enormously in price, and we want to expand our production two or three times. We have copper and we are working on its development. We want to go ahead looking for oil and we have quantities of oil shale already discovered. ”

“ What you are trying to get now from the Congress met half of our minimum needs and as you know, part of this is Foreign Military Sales Credit. Recently rising prices have hit us and hurt very badly. For example, one improved Hawk air defense battalion now costs of over $100 million. ”