French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing and German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt were reportedly in full agreement today that cooperation of the Arab world with the West in the Afghanistan crisis implies an urgent solution to the Middle East conflict. In their informal consultations in Hamburg yesterday and today, the two leaders also agreed that the Euro-Arab dialogue should be renewed and intensified, and that the European Economic Community (EEC) should go ahead with its preparations of a Middle East initiative to fill in the diplomatic vacuum expected after the May 26 deadline for the autonomy negotiations between Egypt, Israel and the United States.
According to government sources in Bonn, both Giscard and Schmidt believe that the conflict with Israel is a higher priority to the Arabs than Soviet expansionism. Last week Schmidt said in a press conference here that what the Arabs call Zionist danger is for them more acute than the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and its repercussions to the Middle East.
Meanwhile, the German radio reported today that Israel has shown its displeasure with the expected European initiative urging the participation of representatives of the Palestine Liberation Organization in any future Middle East settlement. The issue come up in a meeting in Jerusalem between Israel Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir and German Minister for Research and Technology Volker Hauff, who is currently visiting Israel.
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