Direct talks only path to M.E. peace—lsrael

Press, 14 June 1984, Page 10

Direct talks only path to M.E. peace—lsrael

NZPA-Reuter Jerusalem The Israeli Government and Opposition leaders have told the United Nations Secretary-General, Mr Javier Perez de Cuellar, that direct negotiations provide the only path to peace in the Middle East. The Prime Minister, Mr Yitzhak Shamir, emphasised this view in talks with the United Nations chief, who arrived in Jerusalem after visiting Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan to assess prospects for a new Middle East move.

A similar opinion was conveyed by the Labour Opposition party leader, Shimon Peres, who hopes to unseat Mr Shamir in Israel’s July 23 General Election.

After talking to Mr Perez de Cuellar yesterday, Mr Peres told reporters that a United Nations-sponsored Middle East peace conference called for last December by the General Assembly would be counterproductive. The only way to tackle the Arab-Israel dispute was on a country-by-country and step-by-step basis, as stated

at Camp David in 1978 by Israel and Egypt under United States auspices.

The American-mediated talks led to the 1979 IsraelEgypt peace treaty. Mr Peres told reporters that a conference would only reflect “all the disagreements on all the different levels ... the Middle Eastern level, the disagreements between the superpowers, the divisions in the Arab world.”

Arab States visited by the Secretary-General favour the idea of a United Nations conference.

An alternative proposed last year by the United Nations chief would involve tackling the Middle East conflict in the framework of the United Nations Security Council.

This is the only forum in which representatives of both Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation sit around the same table. The P.L.O. has United Nations observer status. But United Nations and Israeli sources say Mr Perez de Cuellar has not actively pressed this formula in his meetings so far. ft Meanwhile, the Leban-

ese Parliament voted confidence yesterday in the Prime Minister’s “national unity” Government and gave it special powers to issue decrees on military and security matters. Fifty-three deputies voted in favour of the confidence motion and 15 against, with three abstentions. A separate vote by show of hands was held later on the special powers bill. The voting ended a Parliamentary debate spread over eight days and punctuated by outbreaks of shelling between rival Muslim and Christian militias who control the two halves of the divided capital.

Many of the 27 deputies who spoke in the debate criticised Mr Rashid Karami for failing to stop the fighting. At least 180 people have been killed and 800 wounded in Beirut alone since he named his MuslimChristian team on April 30. In the worst day of shelling for months some 105 were killed and 250 wounded, most of them civilians in the mainly Muslim western sector of the capital on Tuesday.