Lt. Gen. Odd Bull, chief of staff of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization, conferred today in Damascus with Syrian Ministers and senior officials in what was believed to be a last-ditch effort to induce them to resume participation in an extraordinary session of the Israel-Syrian Mixed Armistice Commission on the basis of adhering to the agreed agenda.
The MAC session was convened last month for the first time in eight years at the initiative of U.N. Secretary-General U Thant when Syrian-Israeli border tensions reached a dangerous pitch. The agenda had one item — the issue of cultivation rights in the demilitarized zones on the border of the two countries. The talks were indefinitely suspended on February 16 when Syrian participants refused to give assurances they would stick to that agenda.
U.N. sources said here today there was a possibility that Gen. Bull would meet with Mr. Thant in Beirut tomorrow where the Secretary-General will be passing through enroute to Burma on home leave. If such a meeting takes place, the U.N. sources said, it would probably involve a review of the entire Middle East situation with special reference to the Syrian-Israeli situation.
Gen. Bull was expected to submit to the Syrian authorities an Israeli warning that Israel too can broaden the agenda. Among the subjects which Israel might bring up for the discussion considered particularly distasteful to Syria were Syrian border violations and the basic call for peace prescribed by the armistice agreement.
Israel reportedly informed Gen. Bull that if the Syrians continued to press for a wider agenda, Israel would in turn raise articles one and three of the general armistice agreement which ban warlike acts or threats and call for peace between the two countries.
Israel might also demand that the MAC meeting give priority to these points on grounds that the two articles, unlike others, are held by the armistice agreement to be irrevocable. While such an Israeli stand might strengthen Gen. Bull’s position in his talks with the Syrians, political sources in Jerusalem remained doubtful that he would succeed.
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