An indication that France will insist on the inclusion of Israel in any meeting of the Security Council at which India and the Arab states would be represented was contained in the text of Premier Charles de Gaulle’s reply to Nikita S. Khrushchev’s call for a summit meeting on the Middle East, which was made public here this week-end.
The Generals letter noted that since other “interested parties” were being involved in the forthcoming Security Council meeting, “it would in my opinion be indispensable also to invite other states of the Middle East, at least Turkey, Persia, Israel who are also directly concerned.”
Another indication came in a report to the French Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Commission by Maurice Schumann, head of the group, reporting on a briefing he received from the French Foreign Ministry. Mr. Schumann, outlining French policy on the Middle East, said that the Security Council must consult “all interested countries–the Arab countries and Israel”–in the current crisis.
Mr. Schumann outlined France’s policy are three-fold: guarantees for the territorial status quo; cessation of the competition among the Great Powers in the region, and economic development of the Middle East.
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