President Karl Carstens of West Germany assured Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak here last night of Bonn’s support for a Middle East peace effort based on the principle that the Palestinian people be allowed to exercise their legitimate rights.
The right of Palestinian self-determination was also referred to in a joint statement by Mubarak and Chancellor Helmut Schmidt at a press conference today. They said: “It is our joint view that an agreed settlement of the Arab Israeli conflict for a full, just and lasting peace is conditional on mutual recognition of the right of all states in the region to live in peace and security, including Israel, and that the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination is also recognized.”
Mubarak, who visited Washington last week on a six-nation tour of Western countries, was in Britain over the weekend and flew to Austria today.
MUBARAK PROMOTES FAHD’S PLAN
Diplomats here said Mubarak used his visit to promote the eight-point plan proposed by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Fahd as a fair and realistic way toward settlement of the Middle East conflict. His German hosts apparently refrained from stressing the European Economic Community’s (EEC) initiative and its Venice declaration of June, 1980, which included a vote for the Palestine Liberation Organization. Bonn appears to have given up hope for a united European policy on the Middle East after France rebuked previous EEC steps and Greece complained that the EEC attitude was not sufficiently pro-Arab.
Mubarak is believed to have asked for German help to exploit old coal mines in northern Sinai which will be evacuated by Israel next April. According to Egyptian officials, this and other projects in Sinai will have a political as well as economic dimension.
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