A “World Conference for the Liberation of Israeli Prisoners in Syria” is to be held here on Feb. 18 in protest against Syria’s refusal to abide by the Geneva Conventions and release a list of Israeli POWs. French writer Simone de Beauvoir will preside over the conference which is expected to bring together some 30 prominent personalities from the intellectual, scientific and artistic milieux of several nations.
Israeli Supreme Court Judge Chaim Cohen and Israeli families who have had no news of relatives who fought on the Golan front in the Yom Kippur War will address the international conference. Honorary committee chairmen include Nobel Peace Prize winners Rene Cassin, Lady Jenny Lee, Belgium’s Human Rights League Honorary President Georges Aronstein, and Raoul Nachez, president of the International Union of Former Prisoners of War.
Some 30 prominent international intellectual artists are expected to attend. Among them are American novelist Saul Bellow; Manfred Eigen of Germany, Nobel Prize winner in the field of chemistry; British Parliamentarian Lord Wells-Pestel; and Swiss writer Andre Schwartz-Bart. The international conference will end with a large public meeting organized by the “Belgian Committee for the Liberation of Israeli Prisoners in Syria.”
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