Kissinger hopes for Friday signing

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33933, 28 August 1975, Page 13

Kissinger hopes for Friday signing

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter —Copyright) ALEXANDRIA (Egypt), August 27. President Anwar Sadat and his advisers are studying a single draft text for an interim peace agreement with Israel which officials hope both sides will initial by the week-end.

The United States Secretary of State (Dr Henry Kissinger), who brought the text with him when he returned from Israel last night, today will hold further talks with President Sadat before suing back to Israel hoping to solve the last obstacles. This is the first time Egypt and Israel have negotiated from a single text, rather than from texts submitted bv both sides. The semi-official Egyptian daily newspaper “Al Ahram” today gave banner headlines to a report quoting sources close to Dr Kissinger as saying that the agreement would be signed on Friday. United States officials said that it was still not certain whether the agreement would be concluded bv then. But there appeared no doubt American. Egyptian, and Israeli officials were confident that an accord was imminent. The agreement would return to Egvnt nart of the territory captured bv Israel in the 1967 Middle East war in

exchange for Egyptian concessions and guarantees. Some of these concessions and guaiantees would be made public, others were expected to be made privately

to the United States, mediator in the negotiations. Egypt would state publicly —in a form of words not vet disclosed — that it will not launch another war against Israel. Egypt is also ready to pledge, according to reliable sources, that it would not i ioin in a war launched ' against Israel bv another ! Arab country, but this was | not likely to be contained in f he nublic part of the agreement. z President Sadat indicated one area of Egyptian concessions last night when he confirmed that Egypt would not support Arab moves to oust Israel from the United Nations. Egypt would also allow Israeli cargoes to pass through the Suez Canal, reliable sources said, although this concession, too, might not be contained in the public agreement. Economic war According to some sources, Egypt will also agree to re-! duce economic warfare: against Israel waged by Arab! nations through their boycott on firms that do business in the Jewish State. Under the agreement. Egyptian troops would move through the present United Nations buffer zone in the Sinai Desert and reoccunv some — but not all — parts of the territory Israel relinquished. The rest of the territory given up bv Israel would form an enlarged, new. United Nations buffer zone. The United Nations peacekeeping mandate would be renewed annually, but Egypt was expected to give private assurances that the renewals would be automatic unless there was a serious deterioration in the Middle East situation.