Chaim Herzog, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, sent information last night to the ambassadors of the seven Security Council nations with which Israel has diplomatic relations–the U.S., Great Britain. France, Japan, Sweden, Italy and Costa Rica–pointing out that the renewal of the UN Disengagement Observers Force (UNDOF) “is an integral part of the disengagement agreement signed by Israel and Syria, and cannot be made conditional to any other matter.”
Herzog also noted that “the inclusion of participants other than the original participants of the Geneva conference is a matter for the original participants of the Geneva conference to decide.” His letter was issued as the Security Council continued to meet over the weekend in an effort to work out a formula acceptable to both Israel and Syria for the extension of the UNDOF mandate.
SYRIA INSISTS ON PLO ROLE
Secretary General Kurt Waldheim reported to the Security Council when he returned from the Middle East last week that Syria agreed in principle to a six-month extension of UNDOF provided that the Security Council’s resolution of extension includes “a specific provision that the Council will reconvene in January, 1978, for a substantive debate on the Middle East problem including the Palestinian question with the participation of the Palestine Liberation Organization.” Such a provision would in effect alter Resolution 242 which contains no reference to the Palestinian issue and speaks in general terms of the need to solve the refugee problem as a humanitarian matter. Similarly, the invitations to the Geneva parley are directed only to the so-called confrontation states–Israel, Egypt, Syria and Jordan, and to the co-chairmen states, the U.S. and the USSR.
The terms of the Geneva conference stipulate that no other parties are to be included without the agreement of all participant parties. The PLO has been accorded observer status at the General Assembly. But its representatives have never attended a Security Council meeting or been formally consulted in any way by the Council, A PLO presence at a Security Council debate next year would establish a precedent that Israel is expected to do all in its power to prevent.
CONDITIONS VIOLATE AGREEMENT
In his statement to the seven envoys, Herzog, citing quotations from the May, 1974 disengagement agreement between Syria and Israel, declared that “it is clear that while the two governments were required to support a (Security Council) resolution providing for the establishment of UNDOF, the renewal of the mandate requires only a resolution of the Security Council.” The accord does not require the agreement of the parties to the renewal of the mandate, he noted. “Thus UNDOF is an integral part of the disengagement agreement.”
Herzog added; “Any opposition to the existence of the force by either of the parties is irreconcilable with the undertakings made in the agreement and constitutes a violation thereof.”
Herzog also pointed out that the Geneva conference was set up under Security Council Resolution 338 and that a letter inviting the participants to the conference from the co-chairmen, the United States and the Soviet Union, said that “the parties have also agreed that the question of other participants from the Middle East area will be discussed during the first stage of the conference.”
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