HC Deb 22 March 1978 vol 946 cc1500-1
11. Mr. Flannery

asked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he has any plans to meet the United States Secretary of State.

Mr. Judd

My right hon. Friend expects to meet Mr. Vance next at the CENTO ministerial meeting in Washington on 19th and 20th April.

Mr. Flannery

Knowing that my right hon. Friend has constant contact with the United States Secretary of State, may I ask whether he will forgive me for once again raising the question of peace in the Middle East? Will he exert what democratic pressures he can on the American Secretary of State to join with him in telling the Israelis that many of their friends throughout the world are steadily being alienated by their stand and that we feel that they must come to an accommodation with the Arab States in the interests of peace in the Middle East? Will he convey to the Israeli Government the view that the utterly disproportionate attack on Southern Lebanon is not a correct form of retaliation, no matter what raid had taken place previously, and that they must disgorge the occupied territories and rediscuss the whole question of the Left Bank?

Mr. Judd

My right hon. Friend has already dealt very fully with those aspects of the matter in his replies to Questions this afternoon.

Mr. Michael Stewart

Has my hon. Friend noticed that in the course of the last half hour the Foreign Secretary has been asked to engage in critical and possibly hostile dialogue with Singapore, the Soviet Union, Uganda, Ethiopia, Israel. Mr. Andrew Young and some of our allies in NATO, including the United States? Perhaps my right hon. Friend would like to know that some of us have confidence that he will exercise reasonable discrimination.

Mr. Judd

I think that my right hon. Friend's discrimination is well known. I can also say that his energy is unequalled.

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