The Foreign Ministry said today that it had no knowledge of a new American Mideast peace plan having been presented to the Soviet Union. Reports of such a plan appeared in the New York Times which said today that the U.S. and the USSR were “close to agreement on the principles” for a Mideast peace formula. One Israeli official said “the people who dream up these formulas of possible American-Soviet agreements must be living on the moon.”
According to Foreign Ministry sources there have been no signs of any change in Soviet policy on the Middle East. They said Moscow is still vigorously opposed to the idea of direct Arab-Israel negotiations at any stage, does not accept the fact of a unified Jerusalem nor would it demand that the Arabs affirm a wish for a just and lasting peace with Israel.
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.