TEL AVIV, Israel -- Former President Gerald Ford secretly assured Israel in writing in 1975 that the United States would support Israel's presence on the Golan Heights in peace negotiations with Syria, a newspaper said today.
Israel captured the strategic plateau in the 1967 Middle East war and unilaterally annexed it Dec. 14.
The United States protested the action by suspending the new U.S.-Israeli memorandum on strategic cooperation and $200 million in military purchases.
'There is a strong suspicion (in Jerusalem) that the United States does not see itself bound by its (secret) promise,' the Ha'aretz newspaper said.
The report said Israeli officials came to the conlclusion after Prime Minister Menachem Begin's decision to annex the Golan Heights caused a furious reaction by President Reagan and his Cabinet.
Ford wrote to former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin within the framework of the 1975 interim Sinai disengagement pact between Egypt and Israel, negotiated by then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the report said.
The September 1975 letter gave assurances the United States would support Israel's remaining on the Golan Heights in negotiations between Syria and the Jewish state, Ha'aretz said.
Ha'aretz said Rabin, who has come out publicly against the annexation, still has Ford's letter.
'The agreement was signed in the post-Vietnam period when there was objection in the United States to the acceptance of any international obligation,' Ha'aretz said.
Congress, at that point, clarified to Ford that the application of any secret obligation to a foreign country would not be binding on the United States and it was decided not to ask for Congressional approval, the newspaper said.
The newspaper said only two senators knew about the letter - Clifford Case, R-N.J., and the late Hubert Humphrey, D-Minn., both strong supporters of Israel.
For its part, Israel's promise to keep the existence of Ford's letter secret 'and the contents were not leaked until now,' the newspaper said.
The newspaper said former President Richard Nixon verbally assured the late Golda Meir, then Israel's prime minister, that the United States would support Israel's retention of the Golan in peace negotiations with Syria.
'When Rabin succeeded in turning the verbal agreement into a written promise from Ford, the matter was considered the greatest political achievement of Rabin's administration among the few who knew about it,' the newspaper said.
