The ongoing dispute between the Labor Party and Likud over an international conference to serve as a framework for direct peace negotiations between Israel and Jordan surfaced in the Knesset again Wednesday.
The controversial formula was also the subject of remarks at a different forum by Mustafa Khalil, former prime minister of Egypt, who is visiting Israel to mark the 10th anniversary of the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s historic trip to Jerusalem.
Khalil made clear his belief that direct negotiations cannot take place without an international conference, the position taken by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, the Labor Party leader.
PROSPECT OF CONFERENCE BLAMED
But Ronni Milo, speaking for Likud, sharply attacked that concept during the Knesset debate Wednesday. He contended that Premier Yitzhak Shamir and King Hussein of Jordan could have been by now engaged in direct peace negotiations were it not for certain Israeli politicians who cling to the idea of an international conference.
According to Milo, Hussein has shied away from direct negotiations because the Laborites are promoting an international conference. “Hussein is well aware of the situation. Therefore he will not engage in direct negotiation when he is being offered an international conference,” Milo said.
But Labor M.K. Aharon Harel quoted the opinion of Egyptian officials that an international conference was the only road to direct negotiations. He warned that unless the peace treaty Israel signed with Egypt in 1979 is expanded to include other Arab countries, the 10 years of peace with Egypt could, “God forbid,” turn into a “passing episode.”
Khalil, who was prime minister when Sadat came to Israel and later when the Camp David accords were being negotiated, spoke before the Center for Peace in Tel Aviv. He told his audience it was a “waste of time” to try to convince Jordan and the Palestinians to retreat from the resolution adopted at the recent Arab summit meeting in Amman which endorsed an international conference.
“How can Hussein and the Palestinians, after accepting the resolution in the last Arab summit of negotiating under an international conference, come back and say that we are going to change our position and try to pick up from where we stopped?” Khalil asked.
He said neither Israel nor any other party would suffer from an international peace conference, which could convene “very soon.”
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