A four-step agenda to resolve the Middle East deadlock was proposed yesterday by Foreign Minister Abba Eban during debate in the Knesset. Replying to a question from Mapam deputy Reuben Arzi, Eban said the steps should be negotiations, agreements, conclusion of a treaty and implementation of it.
He said negotiations meant face-to-face talks with the Arabs, with the declared intention that the aim of the talks was to bring about peace. Agreements, he said, should cover all the matters involved in the Nov. 22, 1967 United Nations Security Council resolution on the Middle East, and they must include agreement on an end to Arab belligerence. Eban said definitions of agreed borders and agreed security arrangements would “obviously” determine the deployment of armed forces under conditions of peace. The nations must explicitly recognize the independence, integrity of every state in the area and its right to exist in peace, he added.
All of these required agreements, Eban said, should then be incorporated in peace treaties which, when signed, would end the state of belligerence and enable a state of peace to prevail. He added that the parties would then agree to work out arrangements to implement the agreements after they were signed as elements of peace treaties.
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