The Syrian Government said today that it would not ask for an Arab oil embargo against the United States to protest the Egyptian‐Israeli peace treaty because would divert attention from Egypt’s “treason” against the Arab world.
In an interview with the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Watan, Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam said Syria and other opponents of the treaty “will not ask Arab oil producing states to cut off petroleum shipments to the United States.”
Yasir Arafat, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, has been urging the use of the “oil weapon” to frustrate the treaty, but Mr. Khaddam said that would be counterproductive.
Mr. Khaddam said an embargo would only “divert attention from the high treason being committed by the Egyptian President against his people and the Arab world as well as from Israel’s occupation of Arab land.”
He also indicated that Arab economic sanctions against Egypt would not include the total suspension of aid that has been suggested by some Arab hardliners. “The oppressed Egyptian people will not be included in the sanctions,” he said.
Iraq has called for a meeting of Arab foreign and economic ministers Tuesday in Baghdad to consider sanctions against Egypt.
Mr. Khaddam said Arabs should concentrate on supporting Egyptian opposition to President Anwar el‐Sadat. He urged the opposition in Cairo to demonstrate “the highest degree of revolutionary violence in order to strangle and overthrow Sadat’s regime.”
