Fatah Says All Have Accepted

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32359, 27 July 1970, Page 13

Fatah Says All Have Accepted

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

AMMAN, July 26.

Fatah, the organ of the Palestine commando movement, today said that Egypt, Jordan and Israel had all accepted the American draft plan as a basis for indirect negotiations leading to a Middle East settlement.

The guerrilla newspaper published what it said was the full text of two outline agreements—one between Egypt and Israel, the other between Jordan and Israel—which would serve as guidelines for indirect talks.

Fatah said the agreement provided for indirect talks to be held between the three parties on the same basis as the Rhodes talks which ended the first Arab-Israeli war in 194849.

In these talks the Arab and Israeli delegations were in separate rooms of the same building, with a United Nations mediator shuttling back and forth between them to seek agreement on an armistice.

Fatah said the outline agreements were “the results of protracted multi-lateral contacts in which the United States played the role of mediator,” and that the American peace initiative announced by the Secretary of State (Mr William Rogers) on June 19—and accepted last Thursday by President Nasser—was the outcome of these agreements.

Denouncing the purported agreements, Fatah said: “The masses will not allow such a bond of slavery to be imposed on them except over the body of the last Arab revolutionary.” There was no immediate comment from Jordanian or American officials on the Fatah report, but political observers in Beirut expressed scepticism about it

They said that internal evidence indicated that the outline agreements published by Fatah might be the texts of the proposals made by Washington last autumn for sepa-

rate peace settlements between Israel and Egypt, and between Israel and Jordan. Egypt publicly rejected these proposals. Neither Jordan nor Israel took a public attitude to them, although Is- 1 rael was understood to have found them unsatisfactory.