Peace Prospects: Differing Views Allon Feels Cease-fire Stable; Yost Pessimistic; Dutch Newsman Says

Acting Premier Yigal Allon, noting that the second anniversary of the August, 1970 Mideast cease-fire would occur in about six weeks, said yesterday Israel was doing everything in its power to extend the cease-fire both to keep the guns silent and in the hope that it might serve as a transition to a Middle East settlement. He spoke at a Technion degree-awarding ceremony.

Remarking that there were individuals “both in Israel and abroad” who are “already guessing” when the cease-fire would come to an end. Allon said he was advising them “not to prophesy.” He said that “though we know that fire may be resumed as-long as there is no political progress,” there was “nevertheless no reason why political progress should not be possible,” He said that if warfare is resumed, “it will not solve any problems and when it ends, we will be in the same situation as we are now.” He urged the Arab leaders “to give peace a chance before the guns are allowed to speak again.”

(Charles W. Yost the former US ambassador to the United Nations told newsmen in Jerusalem last night, after a meeting with Foreign Minister Abba Eban, that he found it difficult to be optimistic about the possibilities for a settlement in the Middle East in the near future, but that he also doubted a resumption of full-scale warfare. Prior to his visit to Israel, he visited Egypt and met with Egyptian leaders in Cairo.

‘WE TRIED HARD TO BE HELPFUL’

Discussing his role as US ambassador, he told the newsmen that “we tried very hard to be helpful over a period of two or three years and we were not very successful.” He said he doubted the US would try again “in the immediate future unless we were asked to do so.” Yost has been touring some of the occupied Arab territories, talking with Arab leaders and officers of the military government. He represented the US at the UN during the Six-Day War in 1967.)

(Joseph J. Sisco, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, disclosed in an interview published in London today that discussion of the Middle East at the Moscow summit meeting last month was “thorough and detailed.” He noted, however, that “because the Middle East conflict can only be resolved by agreement between the parties involved, it would have been unrealistic to expect that the summit could have effected dramatic changes in the situation.” Sisco’s interview appears in the July, 1972 issue of “The New Middle East.” The American diplomat conceded that “The Soviets have a substantial and direct interest in the Middle East.” He disclosed, however, that in President Nixon’s talks in Peking early this year, “The Middle East was marginal.”)

(A Dutch journalist who spent three weeks in the Middle East as a guest of the Arab League, reported today that Egypt is not prepared for another war and that most Egyptians have lost faith in President Anwar Sadat. Writing in the Amsterdam newspaper, Volksrant, Jan Luyten said that Sadat, like the late president Nasser before him, has become “increasingly a prisoner of his own bellicose talk.” According to Luyten, Sadat has succeeded only in making enemies in the West but has not convinced anyone at home, according to what he was told by Egyptians in Cairo.)