President Francois Mitterrand will pay an official visit to Saudi Arabia next month, his first trip to the Middle East since his election last May. Official sources added that Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson will visit Jordan later this month for talks with King Hussein and members of his government. It will be Cheysson’s first trip to the Middle East since he became Foreign Minister.
Mitterrand promised during his campaign to visit Israel at the earliest but Cheysson last week told Israeli correspondents that the trip “could not take place immediately after the Tammuz and Beirut bombings.” The Minister said at the time that no date for the President’s trip to Israel has been set and that this will have to wait “appropriate circumstances.” Cheysson also explained that the bombings have prevented the establishment of “an intimate Franco-Israeli dialogue” which is being postponed for when calm will have returned to the area. Mitterrand, who conferred with the Saudi King in Paris shortly after his election, is due to arrive in Riyadh during the last week of September and Cheysson is due to visit Amman around Aug. 25.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
