June will have been a crucial month in the possible settlement of the Middle East conflict according to Geneva diplomatic sources. It marked the first negotiated agreement between Israel and Syria since 1949, the first extensive trip by an American president to that area and will climax in the Moscow meeting between the American President and the First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.
This major offensive launched by the United States with the approval of all the interested parties, including the Soviet Union, marked the last basic stage leading up to the reconvention of the Geneva peace conference sometime next winter.
American sources in Geneva say that the next phase will be another possible trip by Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger to the Middle East to prepare the conference background and to try and straighten out the Palestinian question and above all its representation at the peace talks.
All this has been made possible by the modest ceremony which took place last week here. Syria and Israel had to find a modus vivendi to stop the fighting on the Golan and thus, for the first time since the October war, stop all military activities between Israel and its Arab neighbors.
BOTH SIDES WANTED ACCORD
Both sides seemed aware of the crucial nature of their talks and both seemed eager to try and conclude the disengagement talks successfully. It was the first Arab-Israeli negotiations ever completed without the slightest incident or difficulty. As the head of the United Nations, troop force, Lt. General Ensio Siilasvuo said at the ceremony. “Both sides were prepared to make concessions to ensure the success of the talks.”
In spite of the agreement reached between Jerusalem and Damascus during Kissinger’s shuttles between the two capitals, a major issue remained to be settled. Namely, what subjects were to be raised first at the inception of the talks. For Israel, the basic issue remained the repatriation of the remaining POWs – for Syria, Israel’s withdrawal from the territories agreed upon in the Kissinger accord.
At the first session, while the two delegations met in camera, the subject of the timetable was raised. United Nations officials later confessed that for them it was “the moment of truth” – the issue on which the talks could either flounder or sail on. At Siilasvuo’s suggestion, both sides readily agreed to deal with the two subjects simultaneously, devoting part of the time at each session to the subjects raised by both sides. Within three, days, instead of the five actually foreseen by the Kissinger agreement, full agreement was reached on all issues: the exchange of POWs, the search for dead bodies and Israel’s withdrawal.
The comparative ease with which the agreement was reached, clearly indicated that both sides, including extremist Syria, were prepared to make concessions in order to prepare the ground for the major peace confrontation.
SUPERPOWERS PRESENT
The disengagement talks were also marked by the presence in the council chamber of the American and Soviet delegations. For the first time in the workings of a military working group the representatives of the two co-chairmen, Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker and Vladimir Vinogradov, were present. No side raised objections as it was clear that this was in application of the secret agreement reached on April 29 when Kissinger and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko met in Geneva on the eve of the Secretary’s tour of the Middle East.
The major disengagement lesson learned by all the participants thus seems to be that for the first time the two superpowers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, intend to supervise the peace process and that their detente process is reaching the Middle East.
Nixon’s forthcoming trip to Moscow will probably aim at reaching some basic agreement on the Middle East – the last remaining crisis zone in the world. For Nixon, it would mean a diplomatic victory which could slow down the impeachment process – for Brezhnev, a recognition of Soviet interests in the area, the lessening of the dangers of a possible confrontation with the U.S. and a new lease to the detente between Washington and Moscow.
In Geneva, conference circles for the first time optimistically predict that the peace conference will reconvene some time next winter. No one can even guess, however, what its chances of success are. Only time, or history will tell.
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