News Brief

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flexible. It is less easy, however, to see the shape of an eventual compromise on the key question of the conference agenda. Egypt is obviously concerned to demonstrate the sincerity of its assertions that it is not negotiating a separate deal. Hence, its delegates’ determination to press for the prominent inclusion of the Palestinian issue–both the immediate question of representation at the Geneva conference and the ultimate question of a political solution–high on the conference agenda. Similarly, Egypt is pressing for the territorial problem to figure prominently with the stress here being on withdrawal on every front, not merely in the Sinai.

In this demand, there is a good deal of disingenuousness, because Egypt’s chief negotiator Ahmed Esmat Meguid knows as well as Ben-Elissar that this is neither the place nor the time at which the vital issue of real estate will be fought out. By tacit common consent that is to be left to higher echelons (perhaps the highest) to deal with in the more comfortable secrecy of some desert buffer zone site.

But for Egypt here, with its delicate problems of Arab hardline disapproval, it is important that the principle of Israeli withdrawal on all fronts be enshrined in the agenda of this conference as additional proof that Cairo has not betrayed or forsaken all Arab interests.

Possibly the breakthrough on the agenda issue will come over the weekend when the conference goes ostensibly into a three-day lapse (to cater for every religious sensibility) and the reporters move off from Mena House to the tourist sights in Cairo and the environs.

A quieter and less pressured atmosphere may then prevail here and Ben-Elissar and Meguid may find the moment appropriate for some constructive exchange of concessions so that next week, at least, this conference can move ahead on the basis of an agreed agenda.