France today officially invited Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban to visit Paris and confer with President Georges Pompidou and French aides. France also accepted an invitation for Foreign Minister Michel Jobert to visit Israel at some future date.
This exchange of visits was agreed upon here this afternoon when Jobert conferred for 45 minutes with Israeli Ambassador Asher Ben Nathan. The two men decided that Eban’s visit will be the first. No date has been fixed mainly because of the Israeli political crisis, but French officials told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that they expect Eban to arrive this spring. Jobert, they said, will visit Israel a few months later.
This is the first time since the creation of the State of Israel that a French Cabinet Minister has accepted an invitation to visit the Jewish State. Diplomatic circles here say that the exchange of ministerial visits may mark “a normalization” of relations between the two countries whose relations have been strained since the Six-Day War when President Charles de Gaulle branded Israel as “an aggressor” and imposed an arms embargo on the eve of the war.
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