The NATO structure will not be used in any move for Middle Eastern peace because Arab states regard some NATO members as “colonialistic” powers, it was indicated here today. United States officials speaking privately about plans for the forthcoming NATO meeting in Paris said the gathering would study developments in the Arab-Israel sphere but would avoid the problem of Arab-Israel differences.
The State Department rules out a NATO approach to the Arab-Israel situation mainly because of Arab emotionalism directed against France, a Key NATO member. It was noted that the Arabs also find other NATO nations objectionable and the United States does not want to identify itself with an approach that the Arabs might find unacceptable.
(The Christian Science Monitor, in a cable from Paris today, said that if the NATO conference takes up the Middle East, works out a policy, and then shows it will resist any further Soviet incursions there, then Moscow may be expected to hold down its Middle East expansion. On the other hand, if the summit meeting fails to show that NATO has both a Middle East policy and has redesigned its military machine to take that fully into account, Moscow can interpret that failure as a green light to continue in its Middle East African expansion,” the cable said.)
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