‘U.S. plan favours Arab side’

Press, 8 March 1988, Page 8

‘U.S. plan favours Arab side’

NZPA-Reuter ■? Jerusalem The Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir, says new {United States Middle-East peace proposals give a clear advantage to the Arab side in negotiations and need to be further discussed when he visits Washington next week. j

Two more Palestinians were shot dead by Israelis in the West Bank on Sunday, bringing to 86 the death toll in three months of disturbances in Israelioccupied territories, as Palestinians prepared for further confrontations this week.

The latest American plan to settle the ArabIsraeli conflict was unveiled by the American Secretary of State, George Shultz, last week. Mr Shamir’s comments on the Shultz plan were made in a speech on Sunday after the publication of a letter from Mr Shultz to Israeli leaders asking them to form a unified position on his plan soon, regarding it as an “integral whole”. The plan called for an international peace conference in Geneva in mid-

April, negotiations on an interim agreement on Palestinian self-rule in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip in May and talks on a I permanent settlement of the conflict to begin in December. Mr Shamir said the United States had always supported Israeli opposition on an international conference and had recently changed its position in response, to public opinion formed by television reports of violence in the occupied areas. “The United States is Israel’s greatest and most loyal friend,”) he said. "But we do) not have to accept even from our best friends things, likely 1 to endanger our state., A blow from ,’aj friend hurts no less, and perhaps hurts more, than a - blow from an enemy.” I ; i