President Jose Figueres Ferrer of Costa Rica reaffirmed his support for Israel’s Middle East policy at a meeting Tuesday in San Jose with Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, the Foreign Ministry here said yesterday. It was the first visit of an Israeli Foreign Minister to Costa Rica, which became an independent republic 110 years before Israel was established. Eban was accompanied by Dov Satat, director of the Latin American division of the Foreign Ministry; Eytan Bentsur, director of Eban’s office, and Ambassador Eli Nevo.
Eban spoke on the Mideast to the 57-member Costa Rican Parliament, and talked with Agriculture Ministry leaders about the possibility of applying Israeli technical assistance to developing dairy farming in Costa Rica’s southern region.
Figueres, whose National Liberation Party is a member with Israel’s Labor Party in the Socialist international, replaced a conservative leadership in the 1970 elections in the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country. A conciliator, he opposes both Communist and far-right dictatorships. At the United Nations Tuesday, Ambassador Benjamin Nunez, a Catholic priest, charged Arab and pro-Arab delegates with insulting his government for suggesting that the Committee of Three consider the situation of Jews in Arab lands as well as the situation of Arabs in the Israeli-administered territories.
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