At the request of President Charles de Gaulle, another meeting between the French leader and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion is being arranged before the Israeli leader’s departure from France, it was disclosed today.
While no definite date has been fixed, it was understood that liaison officers were busy this morning trying to arrange a second tete-a-tete between the two leaders. It was indicated that, because the French President has an unusually crowded week, the second meeting would probably take place Friday.
Mr. Ben-Gurion spent the morning in meetings with “old friends” and with leaders of the Paris Jewish community. He exchanged reminiscences and views on the future of the Socialist movement for more than an hour with former French Premier Guy Mollet and Maurice Bourges-Manoury.
Later, the Prime Minister addressed 18 leaders of the major Jewish organizations in France, calling on them to encourage Jewish settlement, particularly of their youth, in Israel. He also urged them to foster an increase in the teaching of Hebrew in France. With the establishment of the very close relations which had been achieved between Israeli and France, he said, he hoped to find French Jewry even closer to Israel.
The Prime Minister and his party attended a dinner in his honor last night which was given by French Prime Minister Michel Debre, who praised Mr. Ben-Gurion and stressed the close ties linking Israel and France. It was reported that, during the meeting of the two Prime Ministers, they touched on the possibility of a link between Israel and the six-nation European Common Market.
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