Call for Direct Talks Rejected, Jordan Paper Says

The government of Jordan has rejected a call by Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres for direct peace talks and said it will not make a separate deal with the Jewish state, the Jordan Times reported Tuesday.

Peres, speaking in New York on Monday during the 40th anniversary week of the United Nations, urged Jordan to begin talks with Israel by the end of the year to end the 37-year-old state of war between the two countries.

The English-language newspaper, quoting an unidentified government source, said Jordan’s King Hussein has not changed his stand on the Palestinian search for a homeland and will not enter into direct negotiations with Israel.

The high-level Jordanian source said Jordan agrees with the rest of the Arab states that the Middle East peace process should include Palestinian representatives and should be carried out within an international framework.

“Based on its declared stance, Jordan categorically rejects any partial or separate solution,” the source told the Jordan Times.

An international conference is opposed by Israel and the United States, who are against the involvement of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Soviet Union.

On Feb. 11, Hussein and PLO leader Yasser Arafat agreed on a Jordanian-Palestinian peace initiative for Mideast peace, based on U.N. resolutions calling for Israel to give up Arab lands it seized in the Six-Day War of 1967 in exchange for Arab recognition of Israel’s right to exist.

That initiative has been seriously weakened by spiraling violence in the Mideast, including the Yom Kippur murders of three Israelis in Larnaca, Cyprus, the Israeli raid on the PLO’s headquarters in Tunisia and the hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro by Palestinian gunmen.