Dr. Nahum Goldmann former president of the World Jewish Congress, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that his meeting here with President Anwar Sadat of Egypt on Monday dealt exclusively with generalities and carefully avoided the current Israeli-Egyptian negotiations. During the 40-minute meeting with Sadat, Goldmann was accompanied by Baron Edmond de Rothschild who heads the Israel Bonds drive in France, Sir Eric Warburg and Lord Goodman of Britain, and Leon Kahana who heads the Bonds drive in Austria.
Goldmann told the JTA that all the members of the delegation accepted Sadat’s invitation as individuals, not as representatives of their organizations. He said Sadat invited him to Egypt but he will decide only in the spring, by which time peace negotiations, hopefully, will have resumed.
The Representative Committee of Jews in France (CRIF) issued a communique here saying that the delegation which met with Sadat did not represent the French Jewish community. It added that official meetings between French Jews and Egyptian officials will not take place so as to avoid interfering in the peace talks.
During his visit here, Sadat met with President Valery Giscard d’Estaing for what diplomatic sources said was to discuss the possibility of Egypt buying arms from France should the U.S. refuse to supply them. At a press conference before leaving France to meet with Pope Paul VI in the Vatican and Italian leaders in Rome on his way back to Cairo, Sadat told reporters that there can be no further meetings between himself and Premier Menachem Begin of Israel until a preliminary declaration of principles is worked out by Israel and Egypt and approved by both sides.
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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.
