Spokesmen for the American, British and Soviet delegations declined today to comment on widely-circulated reports that they were meeting here in behind-the-scenes efforts to secure big power agreement on a resolution for an Arab-Israeli settlement in the Middle East.
A final meeting of the fifth emergency session of the United Nations General Assembly is to be held before the opening of the annual session of the Assembly on Sept. 19 and it is expected that strong efforts will then be made to produce an agreed resolution.
The tri-power talks were said to be based on the American-Soviet agreement reached between Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and Ambassador Arthur Goldberg at the conclusion of the last emergency meeting of the Assembly — an agreement that the Arab states summarily rejected.
(As Foreign Minister Gromyko of the Soviet Union and Egyptian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Raid opened talks today, Pravda, official organ of the Communist Party, advised militant Arabs that a new war with Israel was not “the only way out” of their troubles.)
The Syrian Government, in a letter today to Secretary-General U Thant, accused Israel of blocking the return of Syrian refugees to their homes in territory now occupied by Israel. The Syrians asserted that Israel had rejected efforts by the International Red Cross to secure the return home of “these innocent civilians expelled by force by the Israeli invaders.” The letter said the Syrian refugees numbered 110.000 and denounced Israeli attempts “to exploit their sufferings.”
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