Drawing Bravos

Sadat plays Europe

He is anathema in much of the Arab world for his dealings with Israel, but there are still plenty of places where Anwar Sadat is considered something of a model statesman. Last week the Egyptian President went to Western Europe and came away with bravos ringing in his ears. He was given a standing ovation by the European Parliament, then a red carpet reception by French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing.

Sadat had been invited to address the European Parliament in Luxembourg. With customary acumen, he seized the occasion to endorse a Middle East peace initiative the European leaders had agreed upon at their summit in Venice last June. But it was a qualified endorsement; he emphasized that the European effort should supplement rather than supplant the Camp David peace accords between Egypt and Israel. When an Italian Communist deputy held up a placard reading NO TO CAMP DAVID! Sadat departed from his text to say, with a smile, "I have not come here to sell Camp David."

Nonetheless, he said, Europe's political unity made it "uniquely qualified to play a prominent role" in the peace process. Noting that a Palestinian entity would pose "no threat to the security of Israel" because it would be too preoccupied "with the task of reconstruction and building bridges with other nations," he urged the Europeans to help persuade both Israel and the Palestinians to work toward "mutual recognition." He also invited the Europeans to consider "security guarantees" for an eventual settlement; one possibility that the Europeans themselves have discussed is the dispatch of peacekeeping troops.

Once again, Sadat came out forcefully against the inclusion of Jordan in any resumption of Palestinian autonomy talks. And though the Venice declaration called for the "association" of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Middle East negotiations, Sadat pointedly omit ted any mention of the P.L.O., a possible signal to the Europeans not to insist on P.L.O. involvement, at least not until a later stage.

Sadat, accompanied by his wife Jehan, next flew to Paris for what had been billed as a two-day private visit to the French capital. Instead, it had all the makings of a state affair. Accompanied by his wife Anne-Aymone, the protocol-conscious Giscard broke with custom by meeting the Sadats at the airport (something he never does unless it is an official state visit), escorted them on a leisurely tour of the city, then hosted a lunch at the Elysee Palace. Afterward, Giscard and Sadat spent two hours talking privately.

The warm Gallic welcome ended several years of frostiness between Paris and Cairo and demonstrated a recent shift in the French diplomatic posture with regard to the Middle East. Giscard has been burned by Libya, whose Colonel Muammar Gaddafi recently made a power grab in the former French African colony of Chad. As a result, he has been discreetly backing away from his formerly enthusiastic support for radical Arab regimes.

With the French elections only three months off, he seems also to be trying to avert criticism that his oil-comes-first foreign policies have not paid off.

The Israelis, meanwhile, took Sadat's continental success in stride. Even before Sadat addressed the European Parliament, most Israelis had a pretty good idea of what he would say. The reason: Israeli radio and television quoted verbatim excerpts of a report sent back to the foreign ministry by Israel's Ambassador to Egypt, Eliahu Ben-Elissar, recounting a private meeting with Sadat. In the leaked excerpts, Sadat said in private what he was later to say in public: that Camp David still takes precedence over a European initiative and that Jordan and the P.L.O.

must stay out of the talks. But the fact that so confidential and high level an exchange could be leaked was deeply embarrassing to Israeli foreign ministry officials. The leak also undercut a popular Israeli diplomatic argument: that Israel could be a powerful--and discreet--friend ol Egypt's in security matters.

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