Asher Ben Natan, Israel’s Ambassador to France, said today that the French government has deliberately estranged itself from Israel since the Six-Day War and predicted that French policy would change if only Paris sent more official visitors here as other Western nations have done.
Ben Natan returned home last week to participate in France Week, a Franco-Israeli cultural event. He told newsmen that French leaders are depriving themselves of the opportunity to get first hand information about Israel. “They have no idea what the Israel of 1972 is like and still think of the country as it was in 1967,” he said.
Diplomatic circles here expressed surprise at a report in the French satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine that certain circles in the French Foreign Ministry want Ben Natan declared persona non grata in France.
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