Canadian Envoy Says Mideast Arms Race, Unresolved Palestinian Issue Impede Mideast Security Prospect

Alan Gotlieb, Canada’s new Ambassador to the United States, warned that the “passionate” arms race in the Middle East and the “unresolved issue of Palestinian rights and aspirations” do not enhance the prospects for Middle East security.

Gotlieb made his brief remarks on the Middle East during a speech yesterday to about 75 persons attending the B’nai B’rith Public Affairs Forum here. The speech, which dealt mainly with Canadian-U.S. trade relations, was his first address since he became Ambassador about six weeks ago.

Praising the Camp David process which, he said, he hoped would lead “to further significant results,” Gotlieb stressed that “there are basic trade-offs to be made and I am convinced that people of foresight and sensitivity in the area will make their influence felt on both sides in favor of the necessary accommodations.

“There is, I believe, necessary recognition that the Arab-Israeli issues will have to be settled on their own merits and that the alternative is a fifth Arab-Israeli war, or a sixth or seventh with consequences too fateful to contemplate.”

Asked if Israel was being pressured to negotiate, Gotlieb replied that history has proven, as in the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty that “it is better to negotiate than not to negotiate.”

Gottlieb, who is Jewish and was born in Winnipeg, told the audience that he had served as a counselor at B’nai B’rith camps after World War II. In his speech he observed that the U.S. and Canada, unlike other countries, are nations of immigrants that are based on multi-cultural and ethnical diversity. He said that his ancestors came to Saskatchewan in the 19th Century and settled in a town called Hirsch, now extinct, which was named after the philanthropist Baron de Hirsch who brought Jewish families to Canada.