Mccloskey Denies U.S. Has Proposed Middle East Conference

The State Department today denied it had advanced a proposal for a Big Four conference which would include Egypt and Israel in an effort to resolve the Middle East crisis. “The United States has made no such proposal,” Department spokesman Robert J. McCloskey said at his daily news conference. The matter arose when the Jewish Telegraphic Agency correspondent raised a question based on a press report that a proposal had been proposed for the United States, the Soviet Union, France and Great Britain to discuss the Middle East along the lines of the Indo-China-style conference with Egypt and Israel joining as participants. McCloskey responded “no comment,” when he was asked whether the U.S. would feel that “such a format” would be constructive. The spokesman said “no” in answering queries whether France or Great Britain had suggested or revived the idea of a Big Four meeting, or whether the U.S. was sending a “high level mission to Cairo soon.”