Lord Caradon, Britain’s former ambassador to the United Nations, suggested today that the UN Security Council call a Middle East peace conference to be attended by all the states that have accepted the Security Council’s Resolution 242. He characterized the present situation as one of “waiting and drifting,” and warned that “violence will again take over in another conflict which no one wants, simply because we have run out of new ideas.” Lord Caradon suggested Geneva as the site of a peace conference and proposed that it be chaired by Ambassador Edvard Hambro of Norway, president of the UN General Assembly who is “universally trusted and respected.” He said the conference would be attended by Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon and by Syria if the latter decides to accept the principles of Resolution 242. In addition, he said, “every effort should be made to form a representative Palestinian delegation.”
Lord Caradon, the former Minister of State at the Foreign Office under the Labor government, presented this proposal in the form of personal suggestions for a Mideast peace settlement in today’s edition of The Times of London. “Has not the time come to end the awful drift?” he wrote. “The next deadlock might be the last.” Israel, he noted has “long asked that both sides should come to the conference table. Israel, moreover, has accepted Resolution 242 as a basis for negotiation and Israel knows very well that security can come only from agreement, agreement backed by international guarantees. I cannot imagine that Israel would refuse to come to a peace conference.” Continuing, Lord Caradon observed: “If the Security Council now calls for a peace conference, the whole outlook will be transformed, the cease-fire can be restored and extended, the desire of the governments for peace can be put to work, the yearning of the peoples concerned for peace can be respected.” According to Lord Caradon, an interim settlement to reopen the Suez Canal “should not become an argument for further delay but an incentive to push on with the peace conference.”
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