Washington Report, May 31, 1982, Page 3

The Tilt Towards Morocco

It is now becoming increasingly clear that as far as one Arab country is concerned —Morocco —the Reagan Administration has discarded the policy it inherited from President Carter and found one of its own.

The new policy: to stand four square behind Morocco in its seven-year war with Algerian and Libyan-backed guerrilla forces in the Western Sahara. The Carter Administration, although friendly to Morocco, had adopted a cautious neutrality in the dispute.

The coming change was signaled only a few days after President Reagan's inauguration, when the Administration announced approval of the sale of 108 M-60 tanks, which the Carter Administration had delayed. The change has been gaining momentum ever since. Most notable has been the revocation of the Carter policy which made arms sales contingent upon efforts by Morocco to show progress towards negotiating a settlement of the war-although it says it still favors a settlement.

The shift if which implies that the U.S. is going to try to help Morocco win the war-has been sounding alarm bells in Congress. The House Foreign Affairs Committee cut in half the Administration's request for $100 million in assistance to Morocco in fiscal 1983, and put restrictions on movement of' American military personnel in Morocco and on U.S. military training of Moroccans for offensive operations. Rep. Howard Wolpe, chairman of the Africa subcommittee, said: "the message is that we are not going to let King Hassan's war in the Spanish Sahara become an American war."