The United States government appeared today to have settled on a formula that would have a single Arab delegation participate in a Geneva conference with Israel as a way of getting around Israel’s refusal to deal with the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization.
A news report, attributed to an unidentified authority who spoke allegedly for the U.S. government, said that the Carter Administration now believes the best way to overcome obstacles to a Geneva peace conference would be for Israel to agree to negotiate at Geneva with a unified pan-Arab delegation that could include Palestinians who accept Israel’s right to exist.
Faced with this report and a State Department assertion on Monday that Palestinians must be included in the Geneva conference, a State Department spokesman said today that the “idea of a single Arab delegation deserves serious consideration as a way of resolving issues that have arisen concerning participation in Geneva.”
OTHER OPTIONS, VARIATIONS NOTED
The spokesman, Kenneth Brown, added that “of course there are other options and variations of them and we will discuss them” with Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan and Arab foreign ministers, beginning with Dayan’s visit here Monday and Tuesday. However, Brown refused to mention the other options available, leaving the impression that the single delegation idea is the prevailing view for the present.
Brown said the Monday statement “left the question open” on how the Palestinians would be represented, adding “that is up to the parties to decide “and” we are not imposing any views.” He said “the parties involved must agree on participants” in Geneva.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency asked Brown whether the United States has discarded the original formula agreed at the United Nations for the Geneva conference–the United States and the Soviet Union as co-chairmen, with Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Israel as the participants. Brown refused to give a “yes or no” answer to the question and referred to his statement on the Palestinians.
Under the Sinai agreement between Israel and Egypt, the United States is committed not to deal with the PLO until it accepts Security Council Resolution 242 as the basis for a settlement. President Carter has since eased this stipulation by offering to talk with the PLO if it would accept Resolution 242 with a qualification favorable to the Palestinians.
Earlier this week, the State Department said, in response to a question, that “it is implicit in everything we have been saying and is simply a fact of the situation that the Palestinians are a party to the conflict.” However, until this concession was made, the assumption had been that “the parties” to the conflict were the governments of the nations in the Middle East.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
