Israeli Ambassador Yosef Tekoah said today that things remained “as they were” in the Middle East following Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohammed el-Zayyat’s “customary but vain attempt to improve Egypt’s tarnished image and to cover up Egypt’s responsibility for the present impasse.” The situation, Tekoah said, “remains overshadowed by the Egyptian-backed atrocity campaign of Arab terrorism and by Egypt’s refusal to discuss any peaceful agreement unless Israel accepts in advance Egypt’s diktat.”
Noting that Zayyat “did not mention or even hint at the possibility of his government’s agreeing to a dialogue with Israel,” Tekoah said that “once shorn of Its public relations embellishments, Mr. Zayyat’s statement reveals an Egyptian position as intransigent as ever.” Additionally, Tekoah said, the Zayyat speech “appears to signal that there will be no change in Egypt’s usual tactics in the General Assembly. Egypt’s tactics, he concluded, “sacrifice the interests of the Arab nation and of all the peoples in the Middle East on the altar of sterile rhetorics in the United Nations.”
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