U.S. Arm-Twisting, Israeli Legwork Key to Freeing Jews : Diplomacy: Bush’s letter to Ethiopia’s acting president seems to have done the trick.

A day after Ethiopian leader Mengistu Haile Mariam fled his beleaguered capital earlier this week, President Bush bluntly told Mengistu’s successors that if they want American help in arranging a cease-fire with the advancing rebels, they must allow all remaining Ethiopian Jews to leave at once for Israel, Administration officials said Friday.

Bush’s letter, dispatched Wednesday, seems to have done the trick. Early Friday, an estimated 16,000 Jews--all that remain in Ethiopia of a community that traces its heritage to the liaison between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba--began to board Israeli and Ethiopian aircraft for the flight to Tel Aviv.

“We understand that the Ethiopian decision . . . was taken in response to a letter from President Bush on May 22,” said White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater, adding that the U.S. initiative began with a visit by former Sen. Rudy Boschwitz (R-Minn.) to Addis Ababa as a special presidential emissary April 26-27.

Fitzwater said the United States hopes that a conference it is hosting in London beginning Monday will “help facilitate an end to the tragic war in Ethiopia.” Representatives of the government and three rebel organizations are expected to attend the talks. Herman Cohen, assistant secretary of state for Africa, will act as mediator.

Another Administration official said Boschwitz delivered “a strong demand for action” on the Ethiopian Jews when he was in Addis Ababa. The official said the Ethiopian government promised a favorable response, but “when the Israelis tried to work out the details, Mengistu diddled them.”

After Mengistu fled to Zimbabwe on Tuesday to escape the rebel forces closing in on the capital, the Israelis told the Bush Administration that they were prepared to make another attempt to negotiate the freedom of the Ethiopian Jews, and they asked for American support.

“Bush sent in the letter,” the official said. “We told them that if they want our help on cease-fires and the London talks, one way to win our affection” would be to let the Ethiopian Jews leave for Israel.

“The agreements were between the Israelis and the Ethiopians,” the official said. “It was a combined effort, with them (Israelis) doing the legwork and us doing the political persuasion.”

In exchange for its support, the Administration urged Israel to refrain from housing the Ethiopian immigrants in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Washington considers these settlements to be an obstacle to Arab-Israeli peace.

“We have told the Israelis that clearly the Ethiopian Jews should not be settled beyond the green line (marking the occupied territories),” State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said. However, officials said the Israelis did not make a firm commitment to keep the new immigrants out of the territories.

Ethiopian Jewish emigration to Israel began years ago. But for the most part, the emigrants were required to travel by a circuitous route to avoid the appearance of direct relations between Israel and Mengistu’s hard-line Marxist government.

Although the Addis Ababa regime permitted a relatively steady stream of Jews to move to Israel, it never previously had agreed to let virtually all of them go in a single operation involving direct flights between Addis Ababa and Tel Aviv.

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir telephoned Bush “to thank him for the American role,” Fitzwater said. The President took the call aboard Air Force One en route from Andrews Air Force Base to Boston at the start of an extended holiday visit to his home in Maine.

Fitzwater’s written statement also offered U.S. thanks to Tesfaye Gebre-Kidan, the acting president of Ethiopia.

U.S. officials said the rebel groups had assured the Administration that they bear no animosity toward the Ethiopian Jews. Nevertheless, American officials said they feared for the safety of the Jewish community during the chaotic period that seems certain to follow the expected rebel victory in Ethiopia’s long civil war.

Israel’s military censors imposed tight restrictions on news about the airlift.

“This is a very sensitive time,” Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, told Cable News Network. “Things are happening that I cannot elaborate upon. I don’t want to do or say anything that might in any way interfere with something that is meant to . . . save human lives.”

A U.S. official said the Ethiopian government had warned American diplomats that “if you talk about this, nobody is going anywhere.” However, the U.S. official said the story can be told now that the airlift is under way.

Times staff writer James Gerstenzang, with President Bush in Boston, contributed to this report.