Mubarak plan under consideration—Shultz

Press, 29 January 1988, Page 6

Mubarak plan under consideration—Shultz

NZPA-Reuter Washington The United States Secretary of State, George Shultz, under pressure to again make the Middle East an American diplomatic priority, has promised to be directly involved in peace moves and to fully explore proposals by the visiting Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak.

Mr Shultz met separately yesterday with Mr Mubarak and with two moderate Palestinian leaders, Hanna Siniora and Fayez Abu Rahme, to discuss recent violence in Israeli-occupied territories and examine prospects for reviving the Middle East peace process. “We had a very good meeting with President Mubarak,” Mr Shultz said. He refused to comment specifically on peace proposals brought by Mr Mubarak, who is to hold talks with President Reagan today. “We’re having intensive discussions with him

about his ideas and we want to explore them fully,” Mr Shultz said. Last week Mr Mubarak unveiled a regional peace plan under which Palestinians in the Israeli-occu-pied West Bank and Gaza Strip would renounce violent opposition for six months while Israel stopped further Jewish settlement in the territories and accepted an international peace conference. Mr Siniora, an East Jerusalem newspaper editor, who along with Abu Rahme, a Gaza lawyer, met Mr Shultz for about 20 minutes at the State Department, told Reuters in a telephone

interview: “The promise we got from him is that he will be personally engaged in the peace process.” Mr Siniora, who complained previously that the United States, and Mr Shultz in particular, had become inactive in the search for Middle East peace, said he believed the Secretary of State was sincere. In a letter to Mr Shultz released to reporters, Mr Siniora and Mr Abu Rahme appealed for a peacekeeping force that could provide "immediate international protection from the brutality of Israel’s military authorities, which have been unleashed against our

unarmed civilian population.” Mr Shultz said he had not read the letter, which was presented at the meeting. Mr Siniora told Reuters that while the peacekeeping force proposal was also raised in talks with Mr Shultz, “he didn’t answer this issue.” Many private analysts, and United States officials, think a Middle East peace breakthrough is unlikely in 1988, especially since it marks the end of President Reagan’s term and since so much U.S. attention is on arms treaties with the Soviet Union.