Israel was not included in the pilot project program outlined in the U.N. Economic Survey Mission report released today because the Jewish state did not need such a program, Gordon R. Clapp, chairman of the mission, explained at a press conference here today.
Discussing this aspect of the report, Mr. Clapp told newsman that Israel already had many pilot projects of its own and that the country possessed “a very large number of technicial people and has a call on many more.” The purpose of the pilot project, he said, was to teach and demonstrate, while Israel was already learning extensively the methods and techniques of economic development.
In the course of his discussion of the report, Mr. Clapp declared that the absorption of Arab refugees by Israel presents the same great economic difficulties as absorption of Jewish refugees and implied that repatriation of Arab refugees to Israel would enhance rather than solve the Middle East’s economic problems of the present.
Mr. Clapp said that he had not met in the Arab countries an eagerness for immediate peace with Israel. He did not get the impression, he said, that the Arab states consider peace at any price.
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