Tekoah’s Stopover in Israel Possibly for Briefing on Israel’s Return to Talks

Israeli Ambassador Yosef Tekoah was scheduled to leave New York tonight for London and from there for Israel, where he will consult with his government on recent Middle East developments. Although Tekoah would not specify the content of the consultations, sources here speculated he would probably be briefed on his government’s most up-to-date position regarding its return to the Jarring peace talks. Sources here and in Washington feel Israel will soon announce her return to the talks. Ambassador Gunnar V. Jarring, the UN’s special Mideast mediator, is due here shortly to help Secretary General U Thant prepare his Jan. 5 report on the progress of the peace talks. In London tomorrow and Thursday, Tekoah will attend a conference of Israeli envoys to European capitals. Israel’s Foreign Minister Abba Eban will also attend the conference. At the UN today, Israeli sources said their government would launch new diplomatic efforts on an international scale to counteract similar and successful Arab efforts. They said that although there were “positive” aspects to the actions of the 25th General Assembly, which is scheduled to end this week, there were also “negative” aspects that Israel had to struggle to overcome.

The positive points cited were: No Arab-initiated resolution gained a majority vote; none of the resolutions that passed, though “unfriendly to Israel and in fact pro-Arab,” actually created “new political facts”; more nations than ever before advised Israel that they did not consider the resolutions important, and Israel succeeded in “preventing results that could have been graver from our point of view.” On the negative side, the prevention of support for Arab resolutions became “much more difficult”; there has been a “noticeable deterioration” in support for Israel’s policies; Britain’s voting has been “most disappointing”; the Assembly “paralyzed” the Jarring mission; the UN has emphasized “slogans” instead of “solutions”; there was undue stress on the “rights of the Palestinians, and United States status has suffered from its “stronger-than-ever” support for Israel. The Israeli sources attributed the negative trend largely to a “tremendous diplomatic and political campaign” In foreign capitals by the Arabs. They said that “It is quite clear that Israel, if it wants to improve its position, must do much more in the capitals on issues which come up before the UN.”