Proposal For Arab Meeting Shelved

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32078, 28 August 1969, Page 17

Proposal For Arab Meeting Shelved

(N.Z. P.. 4. -Reuter—Copyright)

CAIRO, August 27.

The 14 member-States of the Arab League have shelved Jordan’s proposals for an early summit conference for at least three months.

King Hussein’s call for an immediate summit, supported by President Nasser of Egypt, was put off once again at an emergency meeting of Arab Foreign Ministers in Cairo last night.

The Ministers ended two days of talks on the crisis with a comparatively short and routine communique which backed Saudi Arabia’s alternative proposal for a Moslem summit meeting to discuss the burning of Jerusalem’s Aksa Mosque. Although President Nasser had thrown his weight behind it, King Hussein’s proposal for a purely Arab meeting on the crisis with Israel was politely shelved. It will be reviewed again after a meeting ofthe joint Arab Defence Council in November. The last summit meeting

iwas at Khartoum in September, 1967, shortly after the ! Six-Day War in which the IsIraelis overran part of Egypt, ; Jordan and Syria. Reluctance by King Feisal of Saudi Arabia —who says i United Nations efforts for an Israeli withdrawal should first be exhausted —appeared to be shared by enough other delegates to the Cairo conference to postpone the Arab summit meeting. Instead, King Feisal was invited along with Morocco’s King Hassan to go ahead with arrangements for his proposed Moslem summit This will bring together a much wider spread of countries, not all of them basically unfriendly towards Israel.

The dropping of the Arab summit meeting surprised many observers in Cairo, especially since it was officially disclosed in big headlines this morning that President Nasser had sent a cable to King Hussein agreeing on the necessity for such a meeting. In New York last night, Israel warned the United

Nations Security Council that its action was “of little value to resolve the Middle East crisis.”

The 15-member council had earlier unanimously condemned the Jewish State for raids against alleged guerrilla bases in southern Lebanon.