The Moroccan Foreign Minister, Ahmed Balafred, appealed today to French Foreign Minister Maurice Couve de Murville, on behalf of all the Arab states, for action by France to oppose Israel’s National Water Carrier plan. The meeting which lasted an hour, was attended by A. Cheraoui, the Moroccan Ambassador in Paris, and Jean Soutou, the director of the Middle East department of the French Foreign Ministry.
The Moroccan Foreign Minister told the French Foreign Minister that action by France to prevent Israel from implementing the project, which will tap the Jordan River through Lake Tiberias, “would be greatly appreciated by the Arab states and would further Franco-Arab friendship., ” He said, when he left the conference, that he had also conveyed to the French Foreign Office and to the French Government the decisions on the issue taken by the Arab summit conference in Cairo in January attended by Arab kings and chiefs of state.
Meanwhile, Algerian President Ahmed Ben Bella, speaking today in Algeria, again strongly attacked Israel and called for its destruction. The Algerian President, who has just returned from a trip to Eastern Europe–which included a visit to the Soviet Union-said that “Algeria’s role in convincing the Socialist bloc of Israel’s neo-colonialism and imperialist role was all-important.” He also said that in his meetings with Soviet Premier Khrushchev and other “Socialist leaders, ” he tried “to open their eyes to the fact that Israel is the main obstacle to Arab Socialist development.”
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