Meeting With Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan of Israel White House Statement Issued Following the Meeting Between the President and the Foreign Minister.

President Carter and Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan met in the Cabinet Room for 1 hour, 35 minutes. The meeting was also attended by Vice President Walter Mortdale; Secretary of State Cyrus Vance; Zbigniew Brzezinski, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs; Hamilton Jordan, Assistant to the President; Robert J. Lipshutz, Counsel to the President; David Aaron, Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs; Alfred L. Atherton, Jr., Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs; Samuel Lewis, U.S. Ambassador to Israel; and William Quandt, National Security Council staff member, on the American side; and His Excellency Simcha Dinitz, Ambassador of Israel to the United States; The Honorable Ephraim Evron, Director General, Ministry of Foreign Affairs; The Honorable Hanan Baron, Minister, Embassy of Israel; Mr. Meir Rosenne, Legal Advisor to the Foreign Minister; Mr. Naphtali Lavie, Foreign Ministry Spokesman and Advisor to the Foreign Minister; and Mr. Elyakim Rubinstein, Director, Foreign Minister's Bureau, and Advisor to the Foreign Minister, on the Israeli side.

The President began by expressing personal pleasure at his first opportunity to welcome Foreign Minister Dayan to the White House. He noted that his talks today inaugurate a series of detailed and concrete discussions with foreign ministers from the Middle East in the intensive search for a comprehensive peace settlement. The President repeated his determination to help the parties reach that settlement. He underlined his conviction that a just and lasting peace in this vital area of the world requires compromise and courageous leadership from all the parties to the negotiations.

The President and Foreign Minister emphasized the importance of instituting negotiations between the parties through resuming the Geneva conference. The President and the Foreign Minister reviewed the substantive issues of a settlement and discussed questions related to organizing the conference. There was an exchange of views on the question of the Palestinian representation and the question of Israeli settlements. The Foreign -Minister elaborated on the draft treaty of peace the Government of Israel had submitted to us for a comprehensive settlement. As a follow-on to this meeting, Secretary Vance will discuss the Israeli plan in depth with the Foreign Minister and will also discuss with him some specific American suggestions for reconciling the differences between the parties.

The talk between the President and the Foreign Minister will be useful in proceeding with the discussions the President, and later the Secretary of State, are having with the other foreign ministers. Their talk was conducted in the open and friendly spirit of relations between our two countries which permits differences to be discussed candidly and in the knowledge that both the United States and Israel have a heavy stake in achieving their shared goal of peace in the Middle East. In this connection, the President reaffirmed the commitment of the United States to the security of Israel.