Soviets Press for Big Four Meeting on Mideast in Washington, Paris, London

The Soviet Union pressed in three major capitals today its campaign for a Big Power conference to ease mounting Middle East tensions as new fighting was reported on two of Israel’s three fronts. In a significant related development, Pope Paul declared in a rare newspaper interview today that intervention by the major powers might be necessary to bring peace to the area.

The Soviet ambassador to Britain, Mikhail Smyrnovsky, conferred in London for 30 minutes today with Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart. Valerian Zorin, the Russian envoy to France, met for nearly an hour with President Charles de Gaulle. Yuri N. Cherniakov, the Soviet Charges D’Affaires in Washington, met with Undersecretary of State Eugene Rostow for a further discussion of Soviet proposals for a Middle East settlement. Cherniakov on Dec. 19 submitted to the State Department a memorandum on Soviet peace proposals but the United States is still pondering a reply.

After the Smyrnovsky-Stewart meeting, British Government sources insisted that there was no basis for reports that the Soviets had asked for a Four Power Conference on the Middle East. The sources said the Soviets had never made such a proposal but they admitted that representatives of the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and France had been in contact in New York recently but they insisted also that the discussions there concerned only “ad hoc” issues of the Mideast conflict.

Sources in Paris said Zorin had presented to Gen. de Gaulle a Soviet proposal in support of the French plan for a Four Power conference. The Soviet envoy said after the meeting that The position of the USSR is now nearly identical with that of the French.” French sources said that preliminary talks for such a conference could begin within a few days with the participation of the Johnson Administration and added that they understood that sources close to Richard M. Nixon believed that the President-elect was willing to continue soon talks-after Jan, 20 and to accept commitments made before the change over in Washington, if the talks did get underway. Israeli circles in Paris reportedly were bitter over Gen. de Gaulle’s surprise denunciation, at his New Year reception to the diplomatic corps in Paris, of Israel’s raid last Saturday night on the Beirut Airport. The Israelis emphasized that in none of his recent speeches has the French President made any reference to the possibility of associating Israel, Jordan and Egypt with the proposed Four Power talks, as French Foreign Minister Michel Debre had done in proposing such talks on the Middle East.

Despite the general Western denials, reports persisted that the Soviets wanted four-power agreement on an imposed settlement to end the danger of a possible new war in the Middle East. British sources said Britain remained committed to the peace-seeking mission of Dr. Gunnar V. Jarring under a United Nations Security Council resolution of Nov. 22, 1967. It was generally believed that the Soviet plan calls for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Arab territories as the first step in implementing the Council resolution. Israel has made it plain it will not accept such an approve.

The Pope made his suggestion in an interview published today in the Turin newspaper, La Stampa, in which he said, in reference to the Beirut raid that “we passed a really dark day” and that peace in the Middle East could be born “only from generosity, from the general will to interrupt the chain of violence, perhaps from the agreed intervention of the Great Powers.”