Premier Nahas Pasha of Egypt, who has been conferring in Cairo with representatives of the various Arab countries in an attempt to establish a pan-Arab federation, has assured Palestine Arabs that he will not meet with Jewish representatives on a solution of the Palestine problem without first consulting them, it was learned here today.
This pledge came as a result of open dissatisfaction in Arab circles here with the interview the Egyptian premier gave the Cairo correspondent of the London Times last week, in which he said that he was ready to receive a delegation of Palestine Jews to discuss their place in an Arab union. Nahas Pasha’s statement was published in the Arab press here just as Premier Nuri es-Said of Iraq was meeting with representatives of Palestine Arab groups in an attempt to form a unified delegation to represent them at the Cairo unity talks.
Meanwhile, another spoke was placed in the wheel of pan-Arab unity yesterday when the Lebanese president, Bechera el-Khoury told a press conference in Beirut that Lebanon would not agree to surrender her sovereignty to a “greater Syria,” which would be composed of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Trans-Jordan, Creation of such a Levant federation had been envisioned at the Cairo talks as the basis for the eventual pan-Arab confederation.
President el-Khoury is expected to confer in Beirut shortly with Nuri es-Said, who left here for Syria today following a breakdown of his negotiations with Arab leaders. It is understood that the chief stumbling block to formation of a unified Palestine delegation was the failure of the various parties to agree on an equitable distribution of representatives.
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