Tekoah Tells Thant Egypt Adheres to Khartoum Policy of No Peace or Talks with Israel

Egypt is employing verbal subterfuges to make world public opinion believe that it is supporting the Middle East peace mission of Ambassador Gunnar V. Jarring, but the Cairo Government is in fact still following the policy of rejecting peace with Israel. Ambassador Yosef Tekoah of Israel, charged here today. In a letter to Secretary-General U Thant, replying to several letters addressed to the UN chief in the last three weeks by the Egyptian representatives here, Mr. Tekoah stated that “no verbal hoax can conceal the basic fact that the UAR policy remains in word and deed the policy of the Khartoum conference: no peace, no negotiation, no recognition of Israel. It is obvious that as long as the Khartoum decisions continue to express Egypt’s attitude, Egypt bars in effect the road to any peaceful agreement.”

Mr. Tekoah also informed Mr. Thant that the Egyptian claims to an interest in human rights is contradicted “in the treatment by the UAR Government of minority groups in Egypt, including the persecution to which the Jewish community continues to be subjected.”

The Israeli charged that the Egyptian Government’s present policies must be viewed as serving only Cairo’s “propaganda campaign of misrepresentation which accompanies Egypt’s relentless war against Israel.” Regarding the situation in the Gaza Strip, now occupied by Israel, Mr. Tekoah charged that Egypt’s objectives in the area “envision the continued oppression of the Strip’s Arab inhabitants who have been denied all human, political, civil and economic rights by the Egyptians over a period of 19 years that ended only with the outcome of last June’s Six-Day War.”