Senior Israeli and Egyptian officers held their fifth meeting today at kilometer 101 on the Suez-Cairo road and scheduled another meeting for Thursday. As at the previous meetings, the Israeli delegation was headed by Gen. Aharon Yariv and Egypt was represented by Gen. Mohammed Gemassi.
Today’s meeting was closed to the press. Egyptian newspapers played it up as a crisis meeting and headlined stories that Egypt will not resume talks until Israel returns to the Oct. 22 cease-fire lines. It was learned, however, that the Oct. 22 lines were not on the agenda. The subjects discussed were the continuing prisoner of war exchange, supplies to Egypt’s encircled Third Army and the town of Suez and the evacuation of sick and wounded from Suez–about 1240 persons–which was completed late today.
(At the UN, meanwhile, Secretary General Kurt Waldheim has ordered the integration of 36 Soviet officers into the UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) and has instructed the UNTSO commander, Gen. Ensio Siilasvuo of Finland, to add 28 more American officers to the eight already serving with the group. Waldheim announced earlier that Siilasvuo, who was confirmed last week as commander of UNEF, would be replaced as UNTSO chief. He said he had asked the Irish government to make available the services of Col. R.W. Bunworth for that post. The integration of Soviet officers into UNTSO is the first tonic this has happened.)
Aleksandr Levinson of the Moldavian SSR, is under investigation for “parasitism,” according to the National Conference on Soviet Jewry. He applied for emigration in 1972 and renounced his citizenship last August. A trial is imminent the NCSJ said.
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