Monday’s violence on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount seems to have provided new impetus to the European Community’s drive for an international conference to settle the Israeli-Arab dispute.
The prevailing feeling is that such a venture should follow immediately upon resolving the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait.
Italian Foreign Minister Gianni de Michelis, who currently holds the rotating chairmanship of the E.C. Council of Ministers, said priority should be given to a resolution of the Persian Gulf crisis because actions perpetrated by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein make a solution of the Palestinian problem even more difficult.
“We must explain to the Arab world that a rapid solution in Kuwait will allow us to settle down at the earliest to solving the Palestinian question,” de Michelis said.
He spoke during an intermission at a session of the European Parliament, the E.C.’s legislative body, which meets in Strasbourg, France.
The Italian minister told a news conference that the bloodshed in Jerusalem was “unjustified whatever the circumstances may have been.”
All of the E.C.’s institutions issued statements condemning the deaths of at least 19 Palestinian rioters at the hands of Israeli police.
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