Senate Leaders Agree to Put Off Jordan Arms Sale

Senate leaders agreed on a face-saving plan Wednesday that would spare President Reagan an immediate defeat over his proposed $1.9-billion arms sale to Jordan and put it on ice unless the Arab country and Israel begin peace talks.

The compromise--worked out in daylong negotiations between the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), and key Democrats--would stall the arms sale until March 1 unless Reagan certifies that Jordan has entered into “direct and meaningful” negotiations with Israel.

But Congress would retain the right to reject the sale at any time Reagan announced an intention to proceed with it. And if peace talks do not begin by March, majorities in both the House and Senate--which have already lined up solidly against the sale--would presumably vote to kill it.

Lugar said the plan “preserved the options of the President” during a sensitive period in the Mideast peace process. But Democrats said it will effectively doom the sale by shifting the burden of justification to Reagan and to Jordan’s King Hussein, while still giving Congress a final veto.

Lugar predicted that the Republican-dominated Senate will overwhelmingly approve the arrangement when it comes up for a vote today. House leaders were still examining the hastily engineered plan late Wednesday.

Although key congressional sources said that the White House reluctantly agreed to accept the measure, presidential spokesman Larry Speakes refused to confirm that.

“We don’t have anything specific to say,” Speakes said in New York, where President Reagan is attending the U.N. General Assembly. “We will continue to do our talking to the Congress.”

Before Lugar engineered the compromise, the Senate appeared to be on the verge of voting to oppose the sale, which was formally proposed only Monday. Seventy-four senators--including 29 Republicans--had sponsored a resolution to block it, and a similar majority was lined up against the plan in the House.

Lugar contended Wednesday that an immediate vote to kill the arms deal would have a chilling effect on recent peace feelers by both Hussein and Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres.

The Jordanian monarch has called for negotiations between Israel and a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation under international auspices. Peres this week renewed his call for direct talks with the Amman government and seemed to ease Israel’s opposition to an international conference on the Mideast.

Lugar argued that the compromise “keeps the peace process going without having a negative vote in the middle of this, which would be discouraging to all parties involved.”

Reflecting the face-saving nature of the compromise, he added, “It (the arms sale) might have come to an end today.”

‘Bowed to the Inevitable’

Key Democratic opponents of the weapons transaction hailed the compromise as a victory. “The Administration has bowed to the inevitable,” Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said, adding that with the compromise, “we’ll put pressure to bring Jordan into the peace process.”

Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) also endorsed the plan.

By law, the arms deal becomes final if both houses of Congress do not adopt resolutions opposing it within 30 days of its submission. The President can veto any blocking resolutions, but Congress can then override such an action with two-thirds votes in both houses.

Wednesday’s agreement, if passed by both the House and Senate, could delay a final congressional vote until March. “We’re back on March 1 to where we are today,” Kennedy noted.

In proposing the sale, Reagan argued that providing jet fighters, anti-aircraft missiles and other advanced weapons would make Jordan more willing to negotiate with Israel by enhancing Hussein’s stability and putting him in a better position to resist military threats from hard-line Arab states.

Ties to PLO Cited

But opponents of the sale argued that it would strengthen an enemy of Israel that has increasingly close ties to the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Lugar said the compromise would be co-sponsored by both Republican and Democratic leaders in the Senate. He acknowledged that a draft of the proposal is vaguely worded.

For example, Lugar said he could not define what would be considered “meaningful negotiations” between Jordan and Israel. “I have no way of giving you any arbiter that would determine that,” he told reporters.

“There’s enough ambiguity here,” he conceded. “A short, simple resolution of this sort is subject to the good faith of all the parties.”

Staff writer Norman Kempster contributed to this story from New York.