Israel has agreed to a request by Egypt to advance the date of the joint military committee deliberations on Sinai which had been expected to start in mid-January. They will open instead Wednesday afternoon at a site near Cairo.
The Israeli delegation, headed by Defense Minister Ezer Weizman, will leave for Cairo Wednesday morning. He will be accompanied by Chief of Staff Gen. Mordechai Gur, intelligence chief Shlomo Gazit, chief of the General Headquarters branch of the army Gen. Rafael Eytan, and commander of the southern region Gen. Herzl Shafir.
Sources here said today that Israel’s original intention was to hold the military talks only after the Israeli-Egyptian political committee which meets in Jerusalem later this month, makes some headway. The idea was that progress on the political front would aid the military discussions. But the Egyptians, who have set the pace of the peace momentum ever since President Anwar Sadat announced that he would go to Jerusalem last November, apparently decided to give the military talks priority. The request to advance the date was made by Egyptian War Minister Mohammed Gamassy to Weizman last week.
Sources said the Egyptians are anxious to have something substantive to show to the Arab world and the world at large. But Israel’s declared intention last week to strengthen and expand its settlements in the Rafah salient and northern Sinai appears to have prompted the Egyptians to hasten negotiations on the future of the peninsula. The fate of those settlements now looms as the major gap to be bridged at the Cairo talks.
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.
