Syria sharply attacked Israel and the United States today, charging that the alliance between them was the main obstacle to a Middle East settlement.
Addressing the General Assembly, Syria’s Foreign Minister, Farouk Al-Shara, said the U.S. policy of arming Israel and giving it economic aid only encouraged Israeli “aggression.” He said that Israel’s settlement policy aimed at uprooting Arab inhabitants by Jewish settlers, was “utilizing both the Torah and the Nazi doctrine of security.”
Al-Shara claimed that the Middle East is the most dangerous place in the world today, threatening international peace and security. He said his government believes that a just peace in the Middle East would be achieved through an international Middle East peace conference. Syria welcomes the recent Soviet proposals in that direction, he said. Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko called for such a conference in his speech to the General Assembly last week.
The Syrian Foreign Minister said the rejection by the U.S. and Israel of an international peace conference for the Middle East showed their contempt for the will of the international community.
JORDAN F.M. CITES BASIS FOR PEACE
The General Assembly was also addressed today by Foreign Minister Taher Masri of Jordan who maintained that the Arab-Israeli conflict could be solved on the principle of “territory in exchange for peace.”
He said this principle was contained in Security Council Resolution 242 which satisfies Israel’s demands to live within secure, recognized borders and Arab demands that Israel withdraw from the Arab territories it occupied in 1967.
“The principle of ‘territory for peace’ is an international one, approved by the international community and has evolved over the past 17 years since the Israeli occupation of the Arab territories,” the Jordanian Foreign Minister said. “This principle is an embodiment of a pillar of international law; that is, the inadmissability of acquisition of territory by force and the need to prevent an aggressor from reaping the fruit of his aggression.”
Conspicuously absent from the Jordanian diplomat’s speech was any reference to Jordan’s decision last week to resume diplomatic ties with Egypt, a decision that aroused much controversy in the Arab world.
(In Amman, King Hussein denounced Israel’s call for peace talks between the two countries as a “maneuver.” See separate story.)
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