Israel agreed today, in the wake of UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold’s visit, to re-open the road from lssawia village on Mt. Scopus for the use of the Arab villagers. Agreement, conditional on the villagers not creating further incidents on the height, was given at a meeting today between Foreign Ministry officials and Andrew W. Cordier, Mr. Hammarskjold’s executive assistant who has been negotiating between Israel and Jordan for the past week.
Late yesterday, Premier David Ben Gurion reported to the regular weekly session of his Cabinet on his three-hour conference Saturday night with Mr. Hammarskjold. Also discussed by the Cabinet was the course of talks with Mr. Cordier.
The Israeli press reported this morning that during the Ben Gurinn-Hammarskjold meeting it was indicated that Israel would return to the Israel-Jordan Mixed Armistice Commission if Jordan showed willingness to implement Article VIII of the armistice pact which guarantees Israel the right to resume normal operations on Mt. Scopus.
Speculation was rife here about the reason for Mr. Hammarskjold’s visit to Jerusalem. Observers were inclined to doubt that the UN chief had made a visit to Israel’s capital merely to discuss the opening of a dirt road, one of four available to several hundred Arab villagers.
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