Sadat presses ahead with talks plan

Press, 29 November 1977, Page 8

Sadat presses ahead with talks plan

NZPA-Reuter Cairo President Anwaf Sadat, determined to go ahead with his idea for preparatory Middle East peace talks in Cairo, is awaiting word whether any other countries besides Israel would take part. President Sadat declared at the week-end he would still hold the preparatory meeting — meant to pave the way for another Geneva peace conference — even if Egypt and Israel were the only States to attend. The Egyptian Acting Foreign Minister (Dr Butros Ghali) set the ball rolling on Sunday night,' handing invitations to the ambassadors of the United States, the Soviet Union, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. Syria has already rejected the invitation and instead will go to a summit meeting in Libya of hard-line Arab States opposed to President Sadat’s latest peace move. The Palestine Liberation Organisation, too, has announced it will boycott the Cairo talks and send a delegation to the anti-Sadat summit meeting to be held in Tripoli next Thursday. ‘ The crucial question now

is whether Jordan, which has close links with Syria, will agree to sit down with Egypt and Israel. The Jordanian ambassador in Cairo, in a carefully worded reaction, appealed to Arab protagonists to concentrate on the positive aspects rather than negative trends of President Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem earlier this month. Israel, like Egypt, said ■ that it would attend the i Cairo talks even if no-one I else took part. Foreign Min-1 istry officials have declined i to say how Israel received I its invitation. An invitation was also, conveyed to United Nations secretary-general (Dr Kurt' Waldheim) through Egypt’s permanent envoy at the United Nations. The Foreign Ministry 'would not say ■ specifically whether the P.L.O. had been asked. Officials merely said that “the Palestinians” were approached. But informed sources said an invitation had been relayed to the P.L.O. in Beirut, probably through the Egyptian embassy. Before the proposed preparatory talks were announced, Egypt invited a

group of Palestinian and Israeli Arabs to Cairo to discuss President Sadat’s Jerusalem visit and reconvening the Geneva conference. (In London, President Sadat was quoted in an interview with the “Financial Times” newspaper as saying: “I don’t know which Palestinians will come. It’s up to them to decide. The P.L.O. should reach the ;point of being able to act independently of President (Hafez Assad and Syria.') | The Syrian Government (refused the invitation hardly (an hour after receiving it, (maintaining that the Cairo imeeting was to prepare the |ground for a peace pact between Egypt and Israel. President Sadat has repeatedly denied this and reiterated in a television interview at the week-end that he intended to negotiate a comprehensive Middle East peace settlement. The United States and the Soviet Union have not yet made known their positions on the Cairo talks. The two super-Powers were cochairmen of the last Geneva conference, which met briefly and then adjourned two months after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. But Moscow has already condemned President Sadat’s visit to Israel as an attempt to split the Arab world.