French Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville has rejected the suggestion that France should lift its embargo on arms shipments to the Middle East because the ban has been seen as imperilling the regional balance of power by weakening Israel. The embargo, imposed during the Six-Day war last June, cancelled shipments of Mirage-V fighter jets to Israel. French-made aircraft are the backbone of Israel’s Air Force. There have been reports recently that French President Charles de Gaulle was reconsidering the ban and might soon order shipment of the jets to Israel.
The Foreign Minister told a dinner here this weekend that Israel’s military supremacy had been proven so decisively during the war “that there is no problem, even if one takes into consideration recent Russian deliveries” of weapons to Egypt and other Arab nations. He reiterated France’s position that peace in the region could be achieved by Arab recognition of Israel, solution of the refugee problem, free navigation in the Akaba Gulf and the Suez Canal and security agreements between Israel and the Arab countries, guaranteed by “the international community.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
