Israel’s Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, who stopped here this weekend enroute to a visit to Africa, said that there was “absolutely no basis for insinuations and allegations in a Tass statement that, in relations with other states in the Middle East, Israel acts as an agent of any other country.”
Commenting on the charges carried by the Soviet news agency that Israel, the United States and Britain were “plotting to overthrow” the Syrian Government, Mr. Eshkol said that the allegations of Israeli troop concentrations on the Syrian border were “entirely without foundation.”
“Time and again Israel has expressed the sincere desire as a sovereign state in the Middle East for peace with her neighbors,” Mr. Eshkol said. “It is Syria which is constantly engaged in provocations on the frontier. From Syria, infiltrators come to murder peaceful agricultural workers on Israeli territory as in the recent Almagor incident. It is Syria which, from time to time, proclaims the intention to attack Israel.
“It should not be too difficult,” the Prime Minister added, “for the Soviet Union to ascertain the aggressive military order of battle on the Syrian frontier with Israel, its range, categories of its weapons and concentration in areas where it is forbidden under the armistice agreement.”
“One cannot avoid the suspicion,” he said, “that Syrian allegations are being made with the purpose of hiding malicious designs. Israel’s fervent desire for peace and quiet on the frontiers oblige her to maintain the maximum possible restraint on humanitarian grounds. It should be clear to Syria and to her friends and indeed to international opinion that she must abstain from acts of provocation, sabotage and murder.”
Mr. Eshkol recalled his suggestion in Israel’s Parliament earlier this month that the abstention in Moscow from offensive statements could help to strengthen peace in the Middle East. “I regret to say that the latest Tass statement and articles in a similar vein in the Soviet Union in the last days, do not constitute a positive contribution in this direction.”
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