Egypt has informed Dr. Gunnar V. Jarring that it continues to insist that he base his United Nations-sponsored Middle East peace mission on both Security Council Resolution 242 of Nov. 22, 1967, and his aide-memoire of Feb. 8, 1971, diplomatic sources here said last night. In his memorandum. sent to both Egypt and Israel, the Swedish envoy demanded in effect that Israel withdraw to the former international boundary with Egypt as a precondition for peace. Israel promptly rejected the bid, and the Jarring mission has been frozen since.
Dr. Jarring returned to New York last night at the invitation of Secretary General Kurt Waldheim. He is expected to meet with the Mideast. parties, if only to hear them repeat their adamant stands, and to prepare a “progress report” for the General Assembly, which meets next month.
With Israel having told both Dr. Jarring and Waldheim that it demands official retraction of the 1971 memo before the peace mission can be effectively resumed, it is thought by observers here that any break-through at this time is unlikely. The observers are, in fact, highly skeptical that there can be any progress at all as long as Dr. Jarring is the intermediary. According to one report Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, has been urging the Foreign Ministry to disassociate itself totally from the Jarring mission, with no success as yet. (At the United Nations, Israeli officials saw no breakthrough in the offing. One said of Dr. Jarring: “He arrived last night. He will consult the parties. He will write a report. He will stay two weeks and then return to Moscow. Nothing dramatic is to be expected, no new developments.”)
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
