EGYPT: U.S. Opens Effort to Mend Relations With Mubarak Regime : U.S. Opens Bid to Repair Rift With Egyptians

The United States, moving to mend the worst rift in its relations with Egypt in more than a decade, Sunday praised Cairo’s handling of the Achille Lauro affair and said it regrets that it was necessary to seize an Egyptian airliner with the four Palestinian hijackers aboard.

U.S. Ambassador Nicholas A. Veliotes said that Egypt “prevented a catastrophe of incalculable proportions” by the way in which it handled the negotiations that led to the surrender of the terrorists who seized the Italian cruise ship. The vessel sailed Sunday from Port Said for its home port in Italy after Italian authorities released the EgyptAir 737 that was seized by U.S. Navy jets.

Expressing his understanding for the “indignation” felt by Egypt when U.S. jets intercepted the Egyptian airliner carrying the terrorists out of Egypt, Veliotes said the United States is “extremely grateful” to Cairo for saving “so many lives, including Americans.”

Strong Stand Cited

“There can be no doubt where Egypt stands on terrorism and violence. Egypt’s strong opposition (to terrorism) has been expressed in deeds as well as words,” the ambassador said.

U.S. officials said Veliotes earlier in the day delivered a letter from President Reagan to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak expressing “considerable understanding” of the affront perceived by Egypt when U.S. planes intercepted the airliner and forced it to land in Sicily. The hijackers were arrested there by Italian authorities.

The officials refused to disclose the contents of Reagan’s letter, but a senior embassy source described it as a “very good first step towards putting the relationship back in shape” in the aftermath of the Achille Lauro hijacking.

Washington was initially angered by the Cairo government’s decision to let the hijackers go free. That anger was heightened by what one official termed “Mubarak’s lies to us” about the whereabouts of the hijackers before they left Egyptian soil.

In today’s early editions, the official newspaper of Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party carried a scathing attack on the United States that appeared to indicate that the crisis is far from over.

Accusing the United States of failing to support Egyptian Middle East peace efforts, the newspaper Mayo said the airliner incident was engineered by the Reagan Administration to embarrass Egypt and undermine its attempts to find a way of bringing the Palestine Liberation Organization into the peace process. It spoke of a “loss of trust” between the two sides and predicted that relations will deteriorate further.

“The Egyptian position (towards peace talks) found neither support nor understanding from the United States. From there, the U.S. Administration started its new plan to embarrass Egypt and force it to reconsider its position,” the party newspaper said. “It is as if the American President is telling us that his country rejects the peace process in the Middle East and rejects any Egyptian movement in that field and rejects any negotiations with the PLO. . . . That is Reagan’s message to us, and we have received this message and understand it clearly,” the newspaper said.

The U.S. efforts to mend ties with Egypt came a day after the worst anti-American and anti-Israeli rioting in years here. Several hundred students, returning to Cairo University on the opening day of the fall semester, burned American and Israeli flags and shouted anti-government slogans before clashing with police.

Denounced by Demonstrators

Mubarak, denounced by the demonstrators as a “coward” for failing to stand up to the United States, said later in emotional remarks that Egypt’s pride was wounded by the U.S. action, which he called an unprecedented act of “air piracy” that would strain relations for “a long time to come.”

Asked about Reagan’s letter, a Foreign Ministry official welcomed the gesture but said he thought that further efforts will be required to repair what he called the “first real bilateral crisis” between Cairo and Washington “in more than a decade.”

Noting that popular opinion in Egypt is now more anti-American than at any time since the 1973 Middle East War, the official suggested that Reagan ought to send a special envoy to Cairo because his letter might not carry enough weight.

The Egyptian need for a more visible and dramatic gesture from the United States reflects a dilemma that events of the last two weeks have built around the Mubarak government.

Dilemma for Mubarak

The interception of the Egyptian jetliner, coming on the heels of what was perceived as Reagan Administration support for the Israeli raid against the PLO’s Tunis headquarters Oct. 1, has created a groundswell of anti-American feeling from which Mubarak needs to protect himself.

On the other hand, there is very little Mubarak can do to satisfy public opinion on this score because of Egypt’s deep dependence on U.S. economic and military aid, which this year will total more than $2.5 billion.

“They are furious with the Americans, but they don’t have the means to reconsider their ties to Washington because they are too dependent on U.S. aid. So they feel very humiliated,” a Western diplomat said.

Mubarak and other officials have said they were deeply offended by the incident, not only because it was committed by a friend but because in all the breast-beating about standing up to terrorism, the Reagan Administration neglected to thank Egypt for negotiating the surrender of the terrorists and securing the safe release of more than 500 hostage passengers and crew.

Veliotes’ semi-apologetic statement appeared to be aimed at correcting this omission and cushioning what a senior U.S. official conceded was a shock comparable to what Americans might feel “if we had heard that the French had seized an American airliner.”

Praise for Egypt

Praising “the great service performed by the government of Egypt in ending this crisis,” the ambassador acknowledged that the airliner incident has caused “deep concern, even indignation” in Egypt. “We deeply regret that this action was necessary,” he said.

Under the deal that was struck by Egypt, the terrorists were to have been flown to Tunis in the custody of a PLO delegation that came to Egypt to help negotiate their surrender. In Tunis, the Egyptians said, the terrorists were to have been put on trial by the PLO, which had denounced the hijacking and promised to punish the four. Tunisia, however, withdrew permission for the Egyptian airliner to land after the plane left Egypt.

Ambassadors of all the other countries with nationals aboard the Achille Lauro agreed to the deal. But the United States, angered by the brutal murder of one of the American passengers, 69-year-old Leon Klinghoffer, demanded instead that the terrorists be detained and “brought to justice,” a U.S. official said.

Veliotes, who went aboard the Achille Lauro in Port Said on Thursday night after the terrorists were taken into custody, was the first American official to confirm the death of Klinghoffer. In a ship-to-shore radio transmission on Thursday night, Veliotes told U.S. officials in Cairo to call the Egyptian foreign minister, “tell him the circumstances” of Klinghoffer’s death and “insist that they prosecute those sons of bitches.”

Passengers’ Courage Cited

Veliotes praised the courage of the mostly elderly American passengers who he said were singled out for the most brutal treatment.

“When you saw them, these people with their pacemakers and their walkers, looking like everyone’s mother, it’s just remarkable what guts they had,” he said. “They were terrorized, they were scared out of their wits. But none of them cracked, none of them crawled, . . . none of them lost their identities as Americans,” Veliotes said.

The ambassador, his voice filled with emotion, had particular praise for Klinghoffer, a wheelchair-bound New Yorker who was killed and his body then dumped overboard by the terrorists.

“The passengers were numbered like cattle,” in the order in which they were to die, and “Klinghoffer was Number 1,” Veliotes said.

“But I was told by other passengers that when one of the terrorists reached over to take a hold of the wheelchair, Mr. Klinghoffer bit him on the hand. This kind of courage, it’s just unbelievable,” he said.