Two foreign ministers of recently liberated African states, Niger and Dahomey, appealed to the United Nations General Assembly in impassioned terms today for an end to hostilities between the Arab states and Israel and peace in the Middle East.
Both speakers, Adamou Mayaki, Foreign Minister of Niger, and Emile D. Zinsou, Foreign Minister of Dahomey, referred to the Middle East situation during their addresses in the Assembly’s general debate. Mr. Mayaki, noting that peace in all areas is an “immediate” issue before the Assembly, said:
“There are the resolutions which have not been applied and the hatreds which have accumulated, and frontiers that are violated day and night, and the permanent insecurity which has been installed in the heart of the Middle East. What more poignant drama and what more dangerous threat to peace can there be? Basing ourselves on the bonds which unite us one to the other, and concerning ourselves with this drama which divides the peoples whose virtues of hospitality and tolerance we all know and admire, we launch from this high rostrum an appeal for harmony and reconciliation through discussion in justice and in peace.”
Mr. Zinsou in his address told the Assembly: “The Israel-Arab conflict will remain the unfortunate consequence of a refusal to negotiate and refusal to show tolerance. If everyone really wanted peace and decided to bring it about, one hundredth of the sums now being swallowed up in destructive undertakings would be sufficient to change considerably the meaning of life and to change for all of us the aspect of our earth.”
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