Israel and Syria are due to sign tomorrow morning 10:00 GMT the disengagement agreement which, it is hoped, will stop the fighting on the Golan Heights and Mount Hermon. The two delegations, led by Israel’s Brig. Gen. Herzl Shafir and Syria’s Gen. Tayara, will sign the agreement in the presence of the American and Soviet ambassadors to the Geneva conference. The chief of the United Nations observers force Gen. Ensio Siilasvuo will witness the document.
The agreement, diplomatic sources here say, may open the way to the resumption of the Geneva conference which could reconvene next autumn. Tomorrow’s ceremony will take place in the brown panelled council chamber in which the conference opened last Dec.
The agreement provides that within 24 hours after it is signed Israeli and Syrian officers will start working out in Geneva its implementation. The group, which will meet within the framework of the Israeli-Egyptian military working party, will have to complete its work within five days. The actual disengagement will start 24 hours at the latest after the military group concludes its work and will have to be concluded within 20 days.
The Red Cross will start the exchange of the Syrian and Israeli wounded POWs on Saturday. A Red Cross spokesman said Here today that the process will be completed on that day. Two Red Cross planes, one based at Ben Gurion Airport and the other in Damascus, are ready to take off. Israel believes that 13 of the 68 Israeli POWs in Syrian hands are wounded. It is not known how many Syrian POWs in Israel are hospital cases.
The agreement also stipulates that all prisoners of war will be exchanged at a later date. An Egyptian staff officer, Maj. Gen. Tamal el Bagdoub, will witness the ceremony tomorrow morning which will mark the end of the fighting which has been in process now for over 70 days and has caused hundreds of killed and injured on both sides.
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