Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir said today that the synagogue bombing in Paris Friday was part of on attack “organized against the Jewish people and its state, the State of Israel.” He also charged that recent anti-Semitic attacks in France and elsewhere in Europe were encouraged by European overtures to the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Shamir spoke at a press conference in Luxembourg where he is heading an Israeli delegation in talks with representatives of the European Economic Community (EEC) on trade, industrial, agricultural and scientific cooperation. It is the second such meeting. The first was held in December, 1978.
He warned that if the EEC “is going to encourage the PLO as the only representative of the Palestinian people, they will encourage those organizations linked to terrorist organizations.” Shamir was referring to the declaration issued at the Venice summit meeting of the EEC heads of state last June which said that the PLO should be associated with the peace process in the Middle East.
Asked if the declaration may have encouraged the recent anti-Semitic attacks, he replied, “Yes. There is a certain link between these two problems.” He claimed there was a proven link between some European terrorist groups and Palestinian terrorists. “I advise European governments to be more, cautious in their relations with such organizations,” he said.
FOCUS OF TALKS WITH EEC
Shamir also said that Israel would cooperate with the EEC’s fact-finding mission in the Middle East, conducted by Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Gaston Thorn. But he did not believe it would achieve any positive results.
The Luxembourg talks will center on Israel’s future relationship with the EEC and the impact on Israel’s exports of the entry of Greece into the Common Market and the proposed entry of Spain. Israel is asking for certain concessions to offset the new competition in the Mediterranean region. Israeli experts believe that Spain’s economic strength in the agricultural sector might eliminate Israel from the EEC market for traditional exports such as arranges and in the industrial sector Israel’s textile industry would suffer.
The EEC commission conceded that the entries of Greece and Spain would have negative repercussions on the exports of most other Mediterranean countries.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
