A State Department spokesman said today he had “no comment” on a report that the United States has been urging Israel to ease its demands for direct talks with the Arab states for a settlement of the Middle East conflict.
According to the report, Secretary of State Dean Rusk recently sent a letter to Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban to encourage Israeli acceptance of the Security Council Nov. 22 resolution, under which Swedish envoy Cunnar Jarring is now in the Middle East seeking to bring Israel and the Arabs together. The report indicated that the United States also was putting pressure on the Arab countries to cooperate more fully with Dr. Jarring and to enter into direct talks with Israel.
(Foreign Ministry sources in Jerusalem confirmed today that Secretary of State Rusk had been in contact with Mr. Eban on the Jarring mission but they denied that the United States had exerted pressure on Israel to drop its insistence on direct peace talks with the Arabs. The sources declined comment on whether Mr. Rusk had made such a suggestion but observers in Jerusalem said that the United States had in fact approached Israel with a suggestion that mediation might be an essential preliminary to direct talks but that after Israel rejected the idea, the United States did not press the point.)
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