Premier Golda Meir said in a recorded radio interview yesterday that Israel was ready to stop shooting as soon as the Arabs do. The recording, made Monday, before Mrs. Meir became ill, served as a response to Soviet charges that Israel was escalating the Middle East conflict by its air attacks on Egypt. Mrs. Meir said it was the Arabs not Israel who did the escalating, beginning shortly after the June, 1967 war which ended with a series of cease-fire agreements that both sides pledged to observe. “If we had stood idly by, no one would have accused anyone of escalation,” Mrs. Meir said. “But the minute we start shooting back, and we do it better than the Arabs, then that is branded escalation,” the Premier complained.
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