Egypt tries to avoid summit

Press, 14 November 1977, Page 8

Egypt tries to avoid summit

NZPA-Reuter Tunis Egypt, anxious to win time for a reconvened Geneva peace conference on the Middle East, may be forced into an early and potentially divisive Arab summit, sources at the Arab Foreign Ministers meeting in Tunis have said.

The Tunisian Foreign Minister (Mr Habib Chatty) told a news conference after a Ministerial session that a summit meeting- would be held before the end of this year.

The Egyptian President (Mr Anwar Sadat) has already gone on record as saying that an Arab summit meeting at this stage would be premature, although Egypt would agree to one if its “Arab brothers” insisted. The sources said that the Egyptian Foreign Minister (Mr Ismail Fahmi) intended to tell the conference his country did not want an Arab summit before Geneva. But Syria has told a

closed session of the conference, that it wants a summit meeting by the end of the year, they added. The Palestine Liberation Organisation has also said it wants the summit meeting.

A seven-member committee is meeting to discuss the whole question of an Arab summit meeting and may provide the Foreign Ministers with a date and venue, the original purpose of the conference. The sources said that Egypt feared a summit meeting could produce a far less flexible approach to Geneva and lock Arab countries into set attitudes.

They also said such a summit meeting could lead to serious division on how the question of Geneva should be approached. Some hard-line Arab countries were demanding negotiating positions which were difficult to reconcile with the compromises necessary for a successful peace conference.