Washington Report, May 17, 1982, Page 5

Lobby Activities

For Arabs:

The National Association of Arab Americans (NAAA) recently held its tenth annual convention in Boston, Massachusetts, bringing together past and present U.S. and Arab policymakers and 450 representatives from several dozen of NAAA's chapters and affiliates. The purpose of the conference, according to NAAA officials, was to help make NAAA supporters nationwide better informed and more effective when guiding grassroots lobbying efforts.

The theme of the four-day meeting was "The Search For Peace: U.S.-Middle East Policy After Camp David," with panels focusing on U.S. interests and policies toward the region, the likelihood of an "Arab peace plan" and the prospects for peace in Lebanon.

President Reagan, in a letter to convention participants, spoke of the search for peace in the Middle East, saying "I count on the support of responsible American organizations such as yours to achieve progress towards this goal."

In contrast to the pessimism over Camp David's future expressed by other speakers, Morris Draper, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, said that the Reagan Administration would be pushing ahead toward "full autonomy" for the Palestinians, as called for in the Camp David accords signed by Egypt, Israel and the U.S. in 1978.

In a separate development, NAAA Executive Director David Sadd told The Washington Report that he Was "disappointed" that the House Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Organizations, chaired by Congressman Don Bonker, did not, in Sadd's view, "thoroughly question" Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams on the shooting deaths of West Bank Palestinians when Abrams appeared before Bonker's Subcommittee in late April. Prior to the Subcommittee

hearing Representative Bonker had told NAAA in a letter that he planned "to ask him (Abrams) about the situation on the West Bank and what the Administration is doing about the problem."

Sadd said that he plans to ask Congressman Bonker to hold another hearing to investigate Israeli "actions on the West Bank" as soon as the Subcommittee receives a State Department report on the issue which was requested by Bonker in late March.

For Israel:

Albert Spiegel, a Los Angeles businessman and long-time supporter of President Reagan, has emerged as the key Jewish liaison to the White House" who "is expected to coordinate future access to the administration," according to Wolf Blitzer, Washington Correspondent of The Jerusalem Post, in a recent article he wrote for The Jewish Week, a weekly publication serving the Jewish community in the greater Washington D.C. area.

As evidence of Mr. Spiegel's new role Blitzer said that it was Mr. Spiegel who arranged to have Larry Weinberg, a Democrat and President of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), attend a meeting in mid-April with President Reagan and five prominent Republican Jewish leaders.

Because it was a politically bipartisan group giving the appearance that it represented Jewish Americans-the six Jewish leaders were publicly rebuked by Howard Squadron, the head of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, who said: "They obviously appointed themselves as some kind of intermediary committee between the Jewish community and the Administration, and that is an outrageous concept."

Mr. Squadron's organization is an umbrella group composed of more than 30 national Jewish organizations (including AIPAC), which he considers to be the authorized voice of the Jewish community in dealing with the Administration.