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/f’s no secret Peres’ foreign policy coup by Yaacov Ben Yosef Special to The Southern Israelite JERUSALEM —After months of behind-the-scenes maneuvering, Prime Minister Shimon Peres pulled off a major foreign policy coup this week by traveling in semi-public fashion to Morocco for talks with King Hassan. Peres, skipping ceremonies at Ben-Gurion Airport marking the official roll-out of Israel’s new fighter aircraft the Lavi, winged to Morocco Monday afternoon in se cret. He took with him reporters for Israel Television and Israel Radio, but as of Tuesday midday, after Peres was reported here to be in Morocco, Hassan’s government had not officially confirmed the visit. Before even waiting for such confirmation, Syria broke diplo matic relations with Morocco when word came that Peres had left on his journey. Other Israeli leaders, including Peres himself, had visited Morocco but those visits were always kept a secret and only were made known months, or years later. But Has san, as early as November 1985, has been toying with the idea of holding talks with Peres, appar ently on a public basis. It was not immediately clear what foreign policy achievements the Peres-Hassan meetings would produce. Peres may ask Hassan to pressure Jordan’s King Hussein into a more flexible position on negotiations over the West Bank. Indeed, there were even rumors that the Jordanian monarch might join the Peres-Hassan talks. With less than three months left before he must turn over the prime ministry to Likud Foreign Min ister Yitzhak Shamir, Peres is eager to seek progress on the foreign pol icy front. Eager to take over power on Oct. 14, Shamir will not want to restrict Peres’ room for maneuver ing with Hassan. To do so might jeo pardize rotation. Israelis generally applauded the prime minister’s historic journey, with some noting that it was almost as significant as the visit to Jerusa lem in November 1977 of the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. While few expected immediate or tangible results to follow the ses sions, the mere fact that Peres and Hassan were meeting with the know ledge of outsiders was considered significant. It has been a busy week for Peres. Hours before he left for Morocco he saw through to a suc cessful conclusion yet another flare-up with the Likud that could have threatened the fate of the National Unity Government. This crisis again involved Yitzhak Modai. Angered over public criticism leveled at him by Modai, Peres managed Monday to ease Modai out of the Cabinet without a con frontation that might have led to the sudden collapse of the govern ment. Justice Minister Modai tendered Yaacov Ben Yosef his resignation Monday at noon soon after Peres had announced that he planned to fire Modai at an afternoon Cabinet meeting espe cially called for that purpose. By 3 p.m. Monday, the Cabinet approved Modai’s resignation and the crisis was over. Peres left soon afterward for Morocco. Shamir s Likud, unwilling to cause a government crisis over Peres’ plan to fire Modai, went along and agreed to the justice minister’s departure without mak ing a fuss. The immediate cause for the Peres-Modai fracas was a speech given by the justice minister last • week to students in Herzylia. Modai asserted that “Peres knows as much about law as he knows about eco nomics.” This time, unlike in April when Modai publicly criticized Peres, the prime minister wasted no time in announcing that he would fire the justice minister. In April, a compromise was reached: rather than being dismissed, Modai left the Finance Ministry and Moshe Nissim, then justice minister, be came finance minister. With only three months to go before rotation, the Likud felt that it could not afford to challenge Peres’ authority to fire Modai, much as it would have liked to. Had the Likud opposed Peres’ plan to fire Modai, it might have convinced the justice minister not to resign. The way would have been cleared for a direct confronta tion between Likud and Peres’ Labor with the prospect of new elections looming if the crisis could not be otherwise resolved. Clearly, the Likud bloc did not want to chance that. If the situa tion remains as is, Shamir and the Likud will take over power on Oct. 14 from Peres and Labor as the rotation agreements calls for. But, if new elections are called, rotation is off, and no one can be certain how Likud and Labor would fare. Peres has decided to become act ing justice minister for the time being, easing his own task in decid ing what to do about the ongoing Shin Bet Affair. Finally, Monday evening saw the first roll-out of the new, con troversial fighter plane for the 1990s, known as the Lavi. Costing thus far $1.2 billion, the Lavi has become the object of much criti cism within the U.S. where the Reagan administration has sought, thus far unsuccessfully, to scrub the project due to the increasing American price tag. 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