President Anwar Sadat of Egypt delivered a strong appeal for West German support for the national aspirations of the Palestinian people at a dinner given in his honor here last night by President Walter Scheel of the West German Federal Republic. Sadat, whose visit to Bonn, the first by an Egyptian chief of state, is the first leg of a five-nation European tour, declared that “It is time the Palestinian people were given back their legitimate rights after having suffered the bitterness of exile for 28 years.”
He said he could “hardly imagine that the German people does not have sympathy with the just cause of the Palestinians and is aware that the PLO is the personification and voice of this people which is fighting for its rights.” Sadat also called for European participation in peace guarantees that would accompany a Middle East peace settlement within the framework of the Geneva conference.
The Egyptian leader’s views on the Palestinians were echoed by West Germany’s Foreign Minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who addressed a separate dinner given for Egyptian Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmy. Genscher said. “For far too long the world has regarded the Palestinian question merely as a refugee problem. It has not adequately realized that it is a question of how to realize the right of the Palestinian people to live under its own state authority. This,” said Genscher, “would require that both sides recognize each others’ right to self-determination and existence as a state.”
Yesterday, however, West German spokesmen rejected a call by the Arab League for recognition of the PLO and also made it clear that Bonn will not supply arms to Egypt. Klaus Boeling, a government spokesman, said instead that the task of fulfilling Egypt’s arms needs after Cairo’s break with the Soviet Union was “a task which the West must tackle together.” He added that Bonn was “in principle not prepared to deviate from our restrictive arms export policy.”
Hans-Juergen Wischnewski, Secretary of State in the Foreign Ministry and chairman of the ruling Social Democratic Party’s foreign affairs committee, reiterated that position when he called on “our Egyptian friends to have understanding for the fact that our policies don’t allow deviation from the principle of no arms deliveries to areas of tension.”
Boeling said yesterday that West Germany would “not refuse” talks with PLO representatives if they accepted unconditionally Israel’s right to exist. Regarding Sadat’s appeal for European participation in peace guarantees, the Bonn spokesman said Germany, together with its European partners, would support a constructive solution of the Middle East conflict.
Sadat, in an interview today in Der Spiegel, said he believed that Israel was “in a position to manufacture (atomic) bombs at any time.” but does not believe “that it already has any.” He said the October, 1919 war has shown that no party in the Middle East could impose its will on the others. This applied “whether with bombs or anything else,” he said.
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.
