Newspapers here said today that Israel would attempt to clarify contradictory reports about a large-scale West German loan to Israel after the return to Bonn of Dr. Konrad Adenauer, the German Chancellor.
Premier David Ben-Gurion, the newspapers reported, left New York, where he had met with Dr. Adenauer, with the impression that Dr. Adenauer had tentatively promised such a loan, said to be about $500,000,000. But a German Government spokesman at Bonn has repeatedly denied the report.
(At Bonn, it was said today that the facts about the purported loan to Israel are still not clear. It was pointed out at Bonn that a Foreign Ministry spokesman there denied the report about a loan to Israel, and that a similar denial was voiced in Tokyo by Felix von Eckardt, Dr. Adenauer’s press chief, who accompanied the Chancellor on the tour to Japan. Political circles in Bonn, however, speculated on the possibility that Dr. Adenauer may have made a promise to Mr. Ben-Gurion without consulting any of the other German Ministers.)
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