A busy and dramatic news day for August 8, 1978.
Starting with news of a historic summit – President Carter will meet with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at Camp David on Sept 5 in hopes of resuming direct Middle East peace negotiations. White House Press Secretary Jody Powell said the three leaders will meet “to seek a framework for peace in the Middle East” Powell said all sides agreed there is “no task more important than the search for a permanent settlement” The meeting at the presidential retreat in Camp David is the first major breakthrough in Mideast peace efforts since Sadat suspended negotiations last January. It will be the first meeting between Sadat and Begin since December. The Sept 5 summit was arranged by Secretary of State Cyrus R, Vance, who went to the Mideast over the weekend to convince Egypt and Israel to resume negotiations at the foreign minister level.
Israel’s position a month before the three-way summit meeting at Camp David is that it is Egypt’s turn not Israel’s to offer a compromise that could lead to peace in the Middle East. Egyptian expectations for the three-way summit conference in Washington in September center on getting a commitment from Israel to abandon Arab lands seized in the 1967 Mideast War. This has been Egypt’s unbending demand since the peace initiative was launched last November by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
Fingers crossed.
And while the summit was on most people’s minds, in New York President Carter signed legislation giving New York City $165 billion in federal financial guarantees —calling it a self-help program that is in the national interest and should not cost “the American taxpayer a cent”. At a ceremony in front of City Hall the president indulged in what amounted to a Democratic love-feast with Mayor Edward Koch and Gov Hugh Carey with about a thousand invited guests looking on from close-up seats and thousands more jamming the streets behind them. Carter seated at a black mahogany writing desk once used by George Washington used a dozen pens to sign the bill he termed “a crucial step in New York’s long and difficult climb back towards solvency and independence”.
And that’s just a sample of what happened, August 8th 1978 as presented on The World Tonight from CBS Radio.
