Israel Radio reported yesterday that two Americans brought Premier Menachem Begin a message from King Hussein of Jordan last week expressing the monarch’s interest in en- tering the Middle East peace process. According to the radio report, Hubert Humphrey 3rd, Minnesota’s Attorney General and son of the late Democratic Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and Marc Siegel, the Jewish affairs advisor to former President Jimmy Carter, told Begin that Hussein thought “the conditions for peace have been created” as a result of the fighting between factions in the Palestine Liberation Organization.
But Uri Porat, Begin’s spokesman, said the Americans had based their message on their own impressions and had not brought any formal message from Hussein. He added that the message contained nothing new.
“It was the same blah, blah, blah we are used to hearing every couple of weeks when any American comes from Amman, ” Porat said. He added that if Hussein had wanted to send Begin a message, he would have done so through higher diplomatic channels.
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.
