Egypt is asking France to launch a new diplomatic initiative to break the stalled Middle East peace negotiations and to bring the Palestinians under Yasir Arafat’s leadership to the negotiating table.
Egyptian Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Butros Ghaliarrived in Paris for a meeting with President Francois Mitterrand and brought a letter from President Hosni Mubarak asking France to act on its own behalf and also on behalf of Western Europe to get the peace talks off dead center. Franc assumed the chairmanship of the European Economic Community (EEC) on January I.
Ghali said that Egypt’s initiative to involve France and the EEC is partly a result of the recent meeting in Cairo between Mubarak and Arafat. In September, 1982, Egypt and France presented a joint amendment to United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 to make it “more acceptable” to the Palestinians. The resolution refers only to the necessity to achieve “a just settlement of the refugee problem.” The Egyptians want France to help reactivate the amendment which has been dormant for more than a year.
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