A report submitted to the Trilateral Commission has predicted little chance for success for Secretary of State James Baker’s efforts to bring about an Israeli-Palestinian dialogue.
Instead, the report’s author, Garret FitzGerald, former prime minister of Ireland, said the United States and the Soviet Union should work toward bringing about negotiations between Israel and Syria.
If they were successful at that, it could lead to Israel’s acceptance of a Palestinian state, he said.
FitzGerald, who is also the Trilateral Commission’s European deputy chairman, also urged the United States to liberalize its immigration laws to allow more Soviet Jews to enter the country.
This would “reduce significantly tensions in the occupied territories and among neighboring Arab states.”
FitzGerald’s report, which was prepared as a “discussion draft” for a luncheon session Monday at the commission’s annual meeting here, was reportedly greeted coolly by the more than 200 delegates attending the session.
The commission is a nongovernmental body with more than 300 members from North America, Western Europe and Japan. Its stated aim is to promote mutual understanding and greater cooperation between the countries from which its members come.
The Trilateral Commission countries could aid the peace process “by pursuing issues of nonproliferation of chemical, biological and atomic weapons and of conventional disarmament in the region,” FitzGerald says.
Pursuit of these issues coupled with an agreement between Israel and Syria “could facilitate Israeli agreement to a peace settlement involving a Palestinian state,” FitzGerald concludes.
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