Alfred Atherton, the U.S. special envoy, wound up a week-long round of intensive talks with Israeli officials here today and flew to Cairo this evening to begin talks there tomorrow morning. He said that “most of the points” at issue regarding the key Article VI, paragraph 5, and the U.S. interpretation of it had been resolved, “but not all,” and he would therefore return here from Cairo for further consultations.
He also said he would be taking to Cairo the Israeli governments’s views on Articles IV and VI. Israeli sources said there was agreement on virtually all of Article IV (the “review clause”), but virtually no progress on Article VI which deck with the relationship of the peace treaty to the Palestinian autonomy proposal.
Atherton himself bracketed the two Articles together without elaborating as regards what progress had or had not been mode each one of them, and observers therefore deduced that he might try to put them to the Egyptians as a “pack-age” an Israeli concession on Article IV ought to be matched by on Egyptian concession on Article VI.
The U.S. team headed by Atherton and Dr. Eliahu Ben-Elissar, who is the head of the Israeli negotiating team, held their 15th and final session of talks this evening, following a three-hour Cabinet session earlier in the day which dealt with the disputed points in the draft peace treaty. Prior to the final talks between the U.S. and Israeli teams Atherton and Ben-Elissar had an “informal” conversation. The nature of their conversation was not made available.
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