The validity of Four Power talks on a Middle East settlement was challenged by an Israeli official and defended by a State Department representative in separate talks to the B’nai B’rith cabinet on Israel affairs, holding its inaugural meeting here.
Simcha Dinitz, minister of information for the Israel Embassy, charged that the intent of the Soviet Union and the Arab states, in stimulating an “artificial atmosphere of impending war,” was to undermine prospects for direct Arab-Israeli dialogue and wrest political concessions within the framework of the Four Power talks. But Alfred L. Atherton, State Department specialist on Arab-Israel affairs, speaking at the opening session of the weekend meeting, said that the Administration, having “detected some indications” of Soviet agreement with its own views on preventing war, was probing whether the Soviet Union agreed that only a “just and lasting peace” based on a “mutually accepted, juridically defined and contractually binding” settlement can avert the threat.
Maurice A. Weinstein, chairman of B’nai B’rith’s international council, who also spoke, expressed concern that the United States “may overestimate the Soviets’ willingness to seek peace. All the Soviet talk about is political settlement and relaxation of tensions–that is another stopgap solution,” he said.
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