The forgotten man in the Middle East deliberations, United Nations intermediary Dr. Gunnar V. Jarring, said of Israel today that “the side that wants peace must pay a price.” In an interview at his summer house in Sweden with an Israeli journalist, the Swedish ambassador declared: “Israel cannot expect Egypt to accept all her conditions. A settlement must be the result of trust between the two sides.” Dr. Jarring, whose public comments since assuming his Mideast role nearly four years ago have been rare and noncommittal, said of his aborted mission; “Although I did not succeed, yet I believe the end of the matter will be peace in the Middle East.”
The diplomat, whose full-time job is as envoy to the Soviet Union, told the Israeli journalist, whose name was not revealed at Dr. Jarring’s request, that there was very little difference between his mission and the current American efforts toward a Mideast settlement. Diplomatic observers, contrarily, have characterized the American efforts–like the recent Mideast visits by Secretary of State William P. Rogers and Assistant Secretary Joseph J. Sisco–as attempts to save the truce in the wake of the apparent failure of the Swedish go-between to bring the parties to the negotiating table. The U.S. is now the intermediary, the diplomats say, and Dr. Jarring is virtually out of the picture. For his part. Dr. Jarring told the Israeli writer that he had followed the reports of Sisco’s latest mission “with interest.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
