Shimon Peres the Israeli Minister of Transport, Communications and Posts, met this morning with French Transport Minister Jean Chamant to reportedly discuss current plans for widening the Franco-Israeli aeronautical agreement that is up for renewal this year. The pact provides for a pooling of Paris-to-Tel-Aviv flights by Air France and El Al and related arrangements on transit and landing rights. Peres is also due to lunch tomorrow with Telecommunications Minister Robert Galley at the home of Israeli Ambassador Asher Ben-Nathan. Peres’ visit here marks the first Franco-Israeli contact at the ministerial level since Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban’s visit in August, 1968. Although Peres’ meeting are of a strictly technical nature, their very existence indicates a definite improvement in the relations of the two nations. Such meetings could not have been even considered in the climate that existed up to a few months ago.
Meanwhile, Ben-Nathan stressed today that while his government supports any attempt by the Big Four to aid the Jarring mission, it would oppose any attempt by the quartet to impose its collective will on a Middle East solution. Ben-Nathan, addressing a luncheon of the Centre d-Etudes et de Documentation Economique et Sociale, said Israel believes the presence of foreign troops in the area would be “superfluous.” Those who demand such troops, he said, alluding to Egypt, the Soviet Union, Britain and France, do not really want a real and secure peace. If they did, he explained, they would realize that in a genuine peace those troops would not be needed, President Georges Pompidou is expected to discuss the Mideast at a press conference tomorrow in the Elysee Palace.
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.
