Israeli envoy makes troop pull-back offer

Press, 9 February 1983, Page 8

Israeli envoy makes troop pull-back offer

NZPA-Reuter Bonn The Israeli Foreign Minister, Mr Yitzhak Shamir, was reported on West German radio yesterday as offering to pull back Israel’s troops inside Lebanon if other foreign forces took a matching step. The external broadcasting service, Deutsche Welle, quoted reliable sources as saying that Mr Shamir had made the offer in talks with the West German Foreign Minister, Mr Hans-Dietrich Genscher.

The report said that Israel would pull back its troops before Israeli-Lebanese negotiations were concluded to a 40km corridor on the Lebanese side of its border. Israeli conditions were the removal of Syrian forces from the Metaa Hills and a whithdrawal of the Palestine Liberation Organisation from Lebanon, it said. The radio report, which said that Israel was also proposing an internationally guaranteed neutralisation of Lebanon, could not be immediately confirmed by Israeli or West German officials.

Talks between Mr Shamir and West German leaders were described as friendly by both sides, although there was disagreement on Israeli settlement policies in Arab occupied territories. The Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, and Mr Genshcer called on Israel to end its settlement policies which they said were making a Middle East peace solution harder to achieve.

But Mr Shamir responded in a television interview by insisting on Israel’s right to continue with its settlement plans.

He said that the number of Israeli settlers in occupied territories numbered only about 2 per cent of the Arab population of Israel. Changing the policy would solve nothing, he said. Dr Kohl urged him to consider President Ronald Reagan’s peace plan as a realistic way towards a peace solution, calling on both sides in the Middle East conflict to renounce the use of force and show greater willingness to compromise. He said that there could be no peace until the Palestinian question was solved

but that Arab States must recognise Israel’s right to exist.

In Washington yesterday Mr Reagan said that Israel was guilty of unnecessary delay in withdrawing its forces from Lebanon, and was holding up efforts to negotiate a comprehensive Middle East peace agreement.

In an interview with local television reporters he expressed hope that the American negotiator, Philip Habib, would be able to persuade the Israelis to pull out because “the Arab nations are holding back and are reluctant (to enter peace talks) unless they see this kind of gesture of good will.” Mr Reagan said that broader peace talks would not be possible until all foreign forces were out of Lebanon, and the “situation is clearer.” He said that he would be willing to increase the multinational peace-keeping force if necessary to maintain stability in Lebanon.

He also said that the Israelis were technically an occupying force in Lebanon.