A Foreign Ministry spokesman denied flatly yesterday a story in Time magazine claiming that Israel has made a secret peace offer to Egypt. The spokesman said nothing new has happened on the diplomatic front since Premier Golda Meir’s July 26 Knesset speech in which she appealed to Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat to enter into direct negotiations.
According to the current edition of Time, Israel proposed immediate negotiations to Cairo and an offer to return more than two-thirds of the Sinai peninsula. The news weekly claimed the proposal was transmitted to Cairo through American intermediaries two weeks ago but that as of last week had no response from President Sadat.
(State Department spokesman Charles Bray said Saturday, ” We are just not aware of anything that would substantiate that story.” He added, “I don’t think it is true.” Zvi Brosh, the information minister at the Israeli Embassy in Washington said that the Time story “is so far out that it is not the sort of thing we would want to comment on.”)
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