Peres Urges West to Help Arab Nations Hurt by Fall of Oil Prices

Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, in a conciliatory gesture to his Arab neighbors, said Tuesday that Western industrial nations should donate some of their savings from falling oil prices to economic projects in financially pressed Mideast countries.

Peres, holding a press conference after meetings with Vice President George Bush and Secretary of State George P. Shultz, said oil-consuming nations will save as much as $100 billion this year as a result of falling prices. He said some of those savings should be invested “in the stability of the countries in the region.”

It was learned that Peres suggested a 10-year, $25-billion program to assist Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, the four Arab countries bordering Israel. None of the four is a major oil producer, but Jordan, Lebanon and Syria have received economic aid from Saudi Arabia and other oil exporters that may dry up because of the declining oil market.

Plan Outlined to Allies

The Peres plan is understood to suggest projects for such peaceful purposes as infrastructure development, pollution abatement and tourism development. It was learned that he had earlier outlined the plan to Western European and Japanese officials.

A State Department official was noncommittal about the proposal. “All we’ve said is we’ll look at it,” he said.

Peres is known to believe that Israel’s chances of making peace with its neighbors would be improved if they were not facing the edge of economic ruin. But it is not clear if the Arab states would accept programs openly advocated by the Jerusalem government.

‘Overriding’ Issue

“I do believe the economic issue is becoming the overriding one--the most pressing and the most urgent,” Peres said.

Meanwhile, Peres said “some new ideas” to break the deadlock in the Israeli-Arab peace process resulted from his talks with Bush and Shultz. “The basic idea is not to close the doors to peace in spite of the setback which took place in the negotiations between Jordan and the PLO.”

King Hussein recently abandoned a year-old agreement with Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat that the Jordanian monarch had hoped would lead to a territory-for-peace swap with Israel. Hussein scrapped the plan when the PLO refused to budge from its traditional position of refusing to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist, a step that the king said was necessary for peace talks to begin.

Peres declined to disclose any of the details of his new ideas, refusing even to say whether they would be advanced by Israel or the United States.

‘Too Early to Discuss’

“They are in an early stage--too early to discuss” in public, he said. “We will have to check it a little bit more with our neighbors to see if they are workable.”

Presumably, Washington would sound out Israel’s Arab neighbors because the Jerusalem government does not maintain direct relations with any of them except Egypt.

Earlier, in a speech at a State Department luncheon, Peres said: “While the negotiations with Jordan and its leader, King Hussein, are taking a little bit more time than we had hoped for, I do believe that we shall not give up the hope that something will come out of it. As you say in the United States: Winners are not quitting, and quitters are not winning.”

Peres, head of the moderate Labor Alignment, is scheduled to switch jobs in October with Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, leader of the right-wing Likud Bloc, in Israel’s national unity government so he has little time to push a peace initiative. However, in terms of domestic Israeli politics, it might be in Peres’ interest to get the process started.

Peres was lavish in his praise of the U.S. military confrontation with Libya in the Gulf of Sidra last week. In his State Department speech, the Israeli leader said the United States is prepared to take action against international terrorism unlike “other countries that, whenever they meet a problem or a danger, they are becoming reluctant and hesitant.”

The Israeli prime minister is visiting the United States primarily to attend ceremonies marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of the World Jewish Congress. He spoke to the United Jewish Appeal in New York on Monday night and will return to that city this morning after a breakfast meeting with Shultz.