684A.86/5–1353: Telegram
No. 612
The Ambassador in Jordan (Green) to the Department of State1
priority
962. Foreign Minister in conversation with me and Counselor of Embassy May 13 formally confirmed and elaborated statements made in earlier brief conversations I have had with him and with Prime Minister in regard position Arab Governments have agreed to take in conversations with Secretary State concerning possible peace with Israel. He said that meeting of Foreign Ministers in Cairo had unanimously decided that only basis of peace which could be considered is complete implementation of all United Nations resolutions on Palestine beginning 1947.
I suggested that Arabs might lose golden opportunity if they gave Secretary of State impression that they were unanimously intrasigent and unwilling to consider compromise or negotiation and I urged a more reasonable attitude. He was rigid and adamant stating that he was enunciating fixed determination of HKJ on this subject.
This attitude differs widely from attitude of former Prime Minister, former Minister of Defense and ex-senior Regent as previously [Page 1223] reported. I surmise that Cairo meeting crystalized policy in an atmosphere in which no representative of any Arab state dared be reasonable lest he appear less patriotic and less anti-Israeli than the others.2
- Repeated to Tel Aviv (for Secretary Dulles), Cairo, Beirut, Baghdad, Damascus, Jidda, and Tripoli.↩
- Green reported in telegram 968, May 15 (684A.86/5–1553), that after his conversation with the Foreign Minister, influence was brought to bear on the Prime Minister in the hope that he might moderate his views. Green noted that a reflection of this influence appeared in the conversation he and the Secretary had with the Prime Minister on May 15: Instead of insisting on “implementation” of all U.N. resolutions from 1947, he spoke of U.N. resolutions as the “basis for negotiation.” (See the memorandum of conversation of May 15, Document 15.)↩