Unofficial sources said today that the three-member team of experts attached to the U.N. Economic Survey Group — which arrived here early today and was immediately received by David Horowitz, director-general of the Finance Ministry, for the first of a series of economic conversations affecting Israel — will discuss with Israel authorities an offer by the Iraqi Government to exchange 100,000 Iraqi Jews for a similar number of Arab refugees.
(Reuters quoted an Israel Foreign Ministry spokesman as stating that the principle of exchange of population would be acceptable to Israel “only as a part solution and with careful distinction between the property belonging to Iraqi Jews and the refugees’ property which was lost as a result of hostilities.”
The experts team is headed by Dillon S. Myer, of the United States, According to unofficial quarters, the British member of the Economic Survey Group — Sir Deamond Morton — favors the principle of population exchange and may in the future use his influence to modify Iraq’s present terms for such a population transfer.
Earlier, it was announced that President Chaim Weizmann received a delegation from the survey group charged with drafting a series of short-term work plans for the Arab refugees.
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