Foreign Minister Salah Abu Zeid of Jordan, declaring his government “opposed to violence whatever its source or methods,” told the General Assembly today that Jordan was “ready to participate effectively in any international measures to protect innocent civilians against violence.” But, he added, Jordan also supports “the right of an occupied people, every occupied people, to effectively resist occupation and colonialism.”
Israel’s policy of “bondage and enslavement,” he said, poses “a mortal threat to the very survival of Jordan as a state and as a people.” He assailed Israel for opposing the “constructive” idea of a Jordanian-Palestinian United Arab Kingdom with Arab Jerusalem as its capital.
Following Abu Zeid’s speech, the Israeli Mission issued a one-sentence assertion that “the Jordanian Foreign Minister’s acrimonious statement has again demonstrated that public polemics cannot contribute to the search for understanding between the parties to the Middle East conflict and that quiet, reticent dialogue is the only way to a peaceful agreement.”
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