Labor Party leader Shimon Peres was warmly welcomed in Dakar, capital of Senegal this weekend where he is heading a party delegation to a meeting of the Socialist International, the first ever to be held on African soil.
President Leopold Senghor sent his Prime Minister and other top functionaries out to the airport to greet the Israeli delebation at 4 a.m., and Peres is staying at the official Presidential guest house, while other Socialist leaders, such as Willy Brandt of Germany and Joop den Uyl of Holland are housed in a hotel.
Reporting on the Peres visit to Senegal, Maariv’s Tamar Golan wrote today that Peres and Senghor had discussed the Mideast issue at length in private and found themselves in agreement on the need to keep Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s peace initiative from fading away–but were at odds over the issue of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Both men told the Maariv correspondent they were pleased at the opportunity to discuss the issues, and Peres said he now had a better understanding of the outlooks of some African statesmen regarding the Mideast conflict. Senghor is the only leading African statesman to maintain open and direct contacts with Israel since 1973, when almost all Black African states broke their diplomatic ties with Jerusalem. (By David Landau)
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