Shamir to Head Israel’s Delegation at the UN General Assembly Session

The Cabinet today approved the composition of Israel’s delegation to the 35th session of the United Nations General Assembly due to open in New York Tuesday. It will be headed by Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir who leaves for the U.S. today.

Prior to the opening, Shamir will have political discussions in Washington, the most important of them with Secretary of State Edmund Muskie. It will be Muskie’s first meeting with a ranking Israeli diplomat. Shamir is also scheduled to meet with Defense Secretary Harold Brown and with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

In the course of the General Assembly sessions, Shamir has lined up meetings with 15 foreign ministers. He is also expected to participate in the autonomy talks inasmuch as Egyptian Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Butros Ghali will be in New York. Ghali deported for the U.S. today. Reports from Cairo said he had Egyptian proposals to revive the talks, stalled since last May and that he would discuss there with American officials before they were presented to Israel.

Egypt’s Defense Minister, Kamal Hassan Ali, will also be in New York this week and it is possible that Interior Minister Yosef Burg, head of the Israeli autonomy negotiating team will join Shamir there.

The Foreign Minister briefed the Cabinet today on his talks in Cairo last week and his upcoming visit to the U.S. Shamir’s meetings with President Anwar Sadat and other Egyptian officials were reportedly limited to bilateral matters. Burg said today that Sadat promised to speed up nomination process. This would have a “psychological impact but no political impact “on the autonomy talks, he said. “I don’t believe these talks are directly connected,” Burg told reporters.