Foreign Ministry sources said today that they had no knowledge of a completed draft by the Big Four of a memorandum listing the points of agreement and disagreement between the Four Powers on the Middle East. The statement was prompted by a report in the semiofficial Cairo daily Al Ahram that such a document was given to the Egyptian Foreign Office by the French Ambassador in Cairo. (A spokesman for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York told the JTA today that there was “no agreed text of a memo.” Diplomatic sources said that separate memos had been drafted by the British and French and it was possible the latter showed their memo to the Egyptians. The source said there was no U.S. or Soviet draft.)
The task of drafting the memo was delegated to the deputies of the UN Ambassadors of the United States, Soviet Russia, Britain and France. They were supposed to have had a draft ready for the Big Four meeting in New York on April 15 but according to a spokesman for the British mission at the time, they came up with an incomplete memorandum which he described as nothing more than a “stock-taking.” It is still not certain whether the requested draft would be ready by May 5, the date for the next Big Four meeting. It would have to be endorsed by the four Ambassadors themselves before being submitted to the special UN Mideast peace envoy. Ambassador Gunnar V. Jarring as a “guideline” should Dr. Jarring decide to resume his peace mission in the area.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
