Negotiations between Palestine and Egypt aimed at assisting both countries to overcome wartime supply and trade difficulties and to stablish a basis for closer postwar commercial relations opened here today.
The Palestine official delegation is headed by Food Controller Geoffrey Walsh, who is chairman of the conference; the delegation also includes unofficial Jewish and Arab members. Mahmoud Suleiman Ghannam, Minister of Commerce heads the Egyptian delegation, in the absence of the Egyptian Finance and Agriculture Minister.
In a speech opening the conference, Walsh said that war conditions necessitate a greater coordination of supply problems in the Middle East, and suggested that they must be regarded as a single problem rather than as a dozen separate problems for each country.
He declared; “The aim of self-sufficiency in the narrow sense of attempting to make each member of the group self-sufficient is open to serious objection, since it denies to the Middle East as a whole the benefit resulting from a difference in harvests and the times of harvests, and the wider for manufactured articles in which a particular member of the group may specialize or to which a particular country may be specially adapted.”
Turning to the specific problems of Palestine-Egypt trade, Walsh outlined an informal agenda; First, interterritorial trade — what Palestine can supply and what Palestine would want from Egypt; second, the question of visa facilities – the difficulties and delays Palestinians meet in obtaining Egyptian visas; third, control of prices of exported goods to provide a fair price to the producer and benefit the consumer rather than the middleman; fourth, transit and trade facilities — removal of difficulties in shipping goods to Palestine via Egypt. subcommittees were appointed to deal with each of these questions.
Outlining Palestine’s contribution to Middle East economy, Walsh said; “Palestine’s potential contribution to the common welfare consists mainly in its capacity to manufacture a rapidly increasing range of industrial products, the chief limiting factors being the provision of the raw material necessary for conversion into finished products, and containers in which to pack them.” He pointed out, also, that Palestine has an abundance of citrus available for export, but is an import country with regard to other foodstuffs.
Ghannem said that the present negotiations were the first time that Egypt had sent an official delegation to Palestine to discuss trade relations and that the Egyptian government attaches considerable importance to them. Palestine economic circles are closely following the negotiations and hope for an immediate outlet for the surplus citrus crop, imports of which are now limited by Egypt. Palestine industries, turning to civilian manufactures, seek markets.
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