Israel Asks $3.5-Billion U.S. Aid for Next Year; Request a Record

Israel submitted to the United States on Wednesday a record request for $3.5 billion in economic and military aid for the fiscal year beginning next October.

The request, delivered by Finance Minister Yitzhak Modai to U.S. Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, coincided with the arrival of American investigators here to question Israeli officials thought to be involved with Jonathan J. Pollard, a U.S. Navy analyst accused of spying for Israel in Washington.

U.S. officials here emphasized that presentation of the aid request had been scheduled “for a long, long time” and that there was no connection between it and the arrival of the investigative team, which is headed by Abraham D. Sofaer, the State Department legal adviser. But at least some Israeli officials were clearly embarrassed by the timing.

“The problem is, we heard about it (presentation of the aid request) on the radio after it happened,” one government source said.

Israel’s request for aid is made every year in late November or early December. The figure in Wednesday’s request is $500 million above the $3 billion in military and economic aid that Israel sought for the current fiscal year. All the assistance is in the form of grants.

Late last summer, Congress voted special emergency aid of $1.5 billion to Israel, to be spread evenly between the 1985 and 1986 fiscal years. So the amount Israel will receive from the United States in this fiscal year will be $3.75 billion, or slightly more than the amounted requested for fiscal 1987.

Earlier this week, Sens. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) and Bob Kasten (R-Wis.) withdrew a proposal to reduce the interest rate Israel pays on past loans from more than 11% to about 5%. The move, which Israel had not requested but which the pro-Israeli lobby in Washington supported, would have saved Jerusalem an estimated $500 million.

As recently as last month, it was expected that the Inouye-Kasten measure would easily pass both houses of Congress, and Israeli officials have said publicly that it was the Pollard affair that first raised doubts about it.

Pollard, a naval intelligence analyst, was arrested outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington on Nov. 21 and was accused of selling defense secrets to Jerusalem.

The next day, Israel quietly recalled two of its diplomats from the United States, Yosef Yagur, a science attache at the Israeli mission in New York, and Ilan Ravid, deputy science attache at the embassy in Washington. The two are said to have been Pollard’s contacts.

Israel issued a conditional public apology to Washington over the spy affair early this month and promised that if an inquiry into the matter confirmed a link between Pollard and a secret Israeli intelligence unit, the unit would be disbanded.

However, the Reagan Administration also sought Israeli cooperation in assembling evidence against the Pollard incident, and it is in this connection that the Sofaer team has come to Israel.

The team, which includes representatives from the Justice Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the office of the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, wants to interview science attaches Yagur and Ravid as well as Rafael Eitan, a former operations chief of the Mossad, Israel’s principal intelligence agency. Eitan reportedly headed the secret espionage unit known as LEKEM.

The American investigators are also said to be anxious to retrieve secret documents allegedly sold by Pollard to Israel.

Israel contends that it is going to extraordinary lengths to cooperate with the U.S. investigation, even compromising the principle of diplomatic immunity in the case of the two science attaches. However, it has insisted that the meetings with the American investigators will be “interviews” rather than “interrogations” and that no sworn testimony will be taken.

Nevertheless, an Israeli official said Wednesday that the product of the American team’s work here is expected to be admissible in a U.S. court.