King Hussein of Jordan will meet French President Francois Mitterrand Wednesday for what French officials say will be a wide-ranging discussion of the Middle East situation. Mitterrand is due to leave next month for his first official visit to the area, to Saudi Arabia, and Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson is starting this week a trip to several Arab capitals including Damascus and Beirut where he is due to meet Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasir Arafat.
The recent Arab slant within the French Administration is provoking a definite uneasiness among many French Jews. The usually pro-Socialist weekly, Tribune Juive, in an editorial due to appear this week says “the time has come to judge the new (French) Administration on its acts and not on its sentiments or professed sympathies.”
The paper reviews the various Franco-Arab contacts since Mitterrand’s election victory last May and is especially critical of its countless contacts with Arab leaders while treating Israel at best with a certain neglect. (See related story P.2.)
Mitterrand had promised during his campaign to pay an official visit to Israel “at the earliest” should he be elected, but French officials now say that any discussion about such a visit or an invitation to Israel’s Premier to visit Paris “must wait for a more appropriate moment.”
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